Night Lights Classic Jazz Radio Program and Jazz Blog with David Brent Johnson

Night Lights is a weekly one-hour radio program of classic jazz hosted by David Brent Johnson and produced by WFIU Public Radio. Night Lights airs on WFIU HD1 Saturday at 11:05 p.m.

September 28, 2009

Before Broadway: George Benson in the 1960s

By David Brent Johnson

George Benson 1960s In the 1970s George Benson became a crossover star with vocal hits and a smooth-sounding pop-R and B style, but years before that he’d already established a legacy as a jazz guitarist who brimmed with energy and talent. A child-prodigy singer from Pittsburgh, Benson honed his jazz chops on guitar with Brother Jack McDuff’s organ combo in the early 1960s, then was signed to Columbia Records by legendary talent scout John Hammond. Albums such as The George Benson Cookbook and It’s Uptown are early signposts along the path of Benson’s movement beyond his early influences of Charlie Christian and Wes Montgomery, and help make the case for a parallel to another performer, as writer Richard Ginnell notes: “Benson is the guitar-playing equivalent of Nat King Cole — a fantastic pianist whose smooth way with a pop vocal eventually eclipsed his instrumental prowess in the marketplace.”

George Benson Cookbook “Before Broadway” features Benson as a leader and with organists McDuff and Jimmy Smith in straightahead, hard-cooking soul-jazz settings from the 1960s, as well as his interpretation of Miles Davis’ “So What” from his standout 1971 CTI jazz album Beyond the Blue Horizon. Jazz critic Gary Giddins describes Benson’s playing from this era as filled with “lean, hungry dissonances, offhanded energy, whistling articulation, and arpeggiated flourishes.”