George
Benson Tips his Hat to Tommy Lipuma
May
2, 2005 - George Benson says it takes more
than one great mind to create a classic album. The legendary guitarist told Smooth
Jazz Now that his 1976 masterpiece 'Breezin'
was created with the guiding hand of producer 
Tommy
Lipuma. "First he found the songs that he felt that I could really put over,
says Benson, "He was the one who suggested that I do 'On
Broadway' and 'This Masquerade' but
I didn't feel good about either one of them." It's hard to imagine 'Breezin'
without those two classic tracks but Benson adds that he especially was leery
about redoing 'On Broadway,' "It was
because it was such a big classic and remember I'm a singer and I have great respect
for other singers so I didn't want to step on anybody's toes that already had
made the world happy with that song." Benson did however reinvent the tune
via a refreshed rhythm concept that has now become its signature. He was recently
presented with a Lifetime Achievement Honour
from the Canadian Smooth Jazz Awards. Read our second interview with George Benson. -
by John Beaudin
John
Beaudin - Hi George. Thanks for doing another interview with me.George
- Hi again John, it's no problem at all.
John
- When you think of the young George Benson, what advice would you give him?
George
- Practice more. (laughing)
John
- (laughing)
George
- (laughing) Because your competitors are busy at work. They are in the business
of getting ahead and furthering their careers and the best way to do that is to
practice and get to know your instrument. Whether it's your vocals or your instrument.
John
- How conscience were you of The Wave
launching in 1987?
George
- Yeah, I did see it happening and it was very fresh, it was a fresh approach.
I was hoping to get a little more Jazz into it but I could understand where they
were going. They were dealing with a modern audience who had different tastes
so it was good to see it coming and I saw a lot more instrumentals being played
and that was good.
John
- I know you and Earl Klugh go way back to
well before the "Collaboration"
album. What was it about Earl that really hit you?
George
- Well, first of all he was only the second African American in the United States
that I saw playing classical guitar and he was so young. He was only sixteen or
seventeen years old at the time. He had that finger style technique down pat,
he wasn't a fiery guitar player but he had a lot of sentimentality to his playing
and he's very believable so it wasn't just technique with him. There was only
one before him and that was Bill Harris and Bill was a friend of Charlie Bird
that cat Bill Harris made that finger style popular in the United States with
the Bossa Nova music. Earl was the first one who came along after the Bossa Nova
period died that I heard play the acoustic guitar and I knew that if he was successful
I knew that he'd be one of a kind in the United States and for ten years he was.
When people caught onto his playing in 1976 there was no on for the next ten years
until Captain Fingers.
John
- Yeah, Lee Ritenour.
George
- Yeah, Lee
Ritenour
started playing the Classical guitar, I think he started playing with a pick;
I don't even think he played it with his hands. He started playing the acoustic,
round hole guitar and that sound just started taking off but I have to give Earl
the credit for making it popular in the United States. I knew it would happen
and that's what I told him although he disagreed. He played with a pick and he
plays very well with a pick. You know he was the cat who replaced (Bill)Connors
in Chick
Corea's band.
So you know he had to play something, he wasn't playing acoustic he was playing
with a pick and Chick loved him. So he had to change all of that and I knew that
wasn't the real Earl.
John
- I'm set to talk to Earl in the next few months. I really look forward to it.
Tell me what was the process of picking the tunes for the "Breezin"
album?
George
- Well, Tommy Lipuma was the man that came to me with the songs and some were
songs that I didn't particularly agree on and I didn't feel that comfortable about
but you know he was always thinking about what it would do to the public and that's
what an A&R man is suppose to do - Artist and Repertoire. He was a good one,
he's one of the best there is. What he does before and after the product is what
makes him so great. First he found the songs that he felt that I could really
put over, he was the one who suggested that I do "On
Broadway"
and "This
Masquerade"
but I didn't feel good about either one of them. I did like the Jose Feliciano
tune "Affirmation"
because I always liked the Latin tunes that allowed me to be Jazzy on top and
they always had great rhythms underneath you know.
John
- What was your biggest problem with "On Broadway?"
George
- It was because it was such a big classic and remember I'm a singer and I have
great respect for other singers so I didn't want to step on anybody's toes that
already had made the world happy with that song.
John
- Sure, I hear you but that's like your song now! Many people look at that tune
as a Benson song now.
George - Well,
I see that and the greatest compliment that was ever paid to me was when they
did the play "Smoky Joes' Cafe" in New York and they had a group in
the play called the Drifters because they were really important to the guys who
write all the songs. It was all about the composers who wrote for Atlantic Records.
Leiber & Stoller was who the play was about and when they did the song "On
Broadway" they used my rhythm concept (George hums the rhythm) and that was
the thing that I changed that made the song mine, it gave it my own spin. I had
such great respect for that song that I didn't want to destroy it. I told Tommy,
"Let me mess with it a little bit." I was just hoping to find something
to get around the original.
John
- The album "Big Boss Band"
was another reinvention, what was the catalyst to you doing that album with the
Count Basie Orchestra?
George - Well,
Count Basie and I were always talking about doing something together, he was like
a grandfather to the music world. When you're talking Count Basie you're talking
royalty for real, him and Duke Ellington. Count had such a relationship with Swing
and when I would speak to him it would be like speaking to royalty and he always
loved me and he always let me know that. I told him once I was writing a song
for him and he said, "George, we have to do this album." I wrote this
song called Basie's Bag" and I saw him backstage at the town where I live
in New Jersey and I played the song for him live and he said, "George, call
Frank Foster and tell him to start writing the arrangement so we can go into the
studio to record it." But then he passed away right after that. Frank called
me up a year later and I said we can still do this record. There's no reason why
we can't because the band was still together so we all got together and did the
album.
 |
George
Benson accepts his Lifetime Achievement Award
At the very first Canadian Smooth Jazz Awards at the Oakville Centre of Performing
Arts. April 10, 2005. |
John
- When did you become a Jehovah's Witness 1979?
George
- Yeah, I got baptized then but I had been studying the bible many years
before that with them.
John
- What was it that helped you find that faith?
George
- Oh yeah, years ago one of my cousins was killed in a gang fight, he was just
a kid he was sixteen years old and that was the biggest tragedy for me at that
point in my life because I grew up with him. Our mothers were sisters, we lived
in the same household and we were raised together and he was a protector for me
when I grew up because he was such a tough kid you know. His mother would tell
him that it would get him in trouble one day because he loved to fight and finally
somebody couldn't stand to get beat up and they killed him and that was a tremendous
tragedy and it was then that we started looking for answers and the only satisfying
answers to where life was going was found in the bible. My mother was always a
bible person anyway she had been taking me to many different kinds of churches
since I was a little boy and she found God's name and that was the thing that
made me become a Jehovah's Witness. They knew God's name. They showed that to
us in the bible. That was the great difference that made the difference for me.
John
- I love talking to people about their faith and where they came from, how they
found it and why it works for them and you had checked out many different churches
via your mother.
George
- Yeah, for me it answered a lot of my questions about life and another thing
about going to different churches was I got a chance to see how other people think
so none of that was wasted. I had a chance to see what motivated other people
so the value was still there. My mother took me to all these different places
to learn about religion in general and for me the thing that I was looking for
was found with the Jehovah's Witnesses. They are very demanding in that they stick
to bible principles and they do not waiver from it. I like that about them more
than anything else.
John
- We have an Autistic daughter and one of our former therapists was a J.W. and
she told me once that one of the things that really works for her is how structured
and clear the religion is.
George
- That's right and it has a goal and it sets out the goal very clearly. There
is that goal in the bible and what the bibles all about, it's not just about some
nice words written down, it has a purpose and it's clear and we head towards that
goal, all six million of us around the world. You know, I know what a Jehovah's
Witness is thinking around the world in Africa or in Russia. We all have the same
outlook and we study the same thing every week.
John
- Do you enjoy that kinship?
George
- Yes, it's a big family.
John
- George "White Rabbit" is
one of my favourite albums of yours from the CTI years.
George
- Yeah, it was great. I told you earlier how I like Latin things and my thing
was to do a South American sounding album because of all the great harmonies and
they always have great rhythm so I felt it would be great to put Jazz licks over
South American harmonies. So I went to Creed Taylor and he said, "Sure George"
and he gave me the song "Little Train" by Villa Lobos and I went home
and learned it and I came back the next day with two new songs that I'd written
overnight and he said, "Man, you didn't have these songs yesterday where
did these songs come from?" We then went into the studio. Do you remember
the song "Mar?"
John
- Yep, last song on the album.
George
- Yeah, that was one of the two and then I brought in Earl
Klugh,
I told them that I had this kid that would be perfect for this record and he was
only about seventeen years old then. I remember I asked him, "Earl, do you
want to make a record with me?" and he said, "Yeah!" You know Creed
Taylor was not impressed with him. I brought him in so Creed could hear him but
Creed didn't have the vision that I had and I told Creed he shouldn't sign him
because Earl needed someone who really believed in him so I didn't force the issue.
I got off of that right away but later I got a call from a guy who was knocked
out by Earl and I thought this is the guy. He happened to be George Butler who
was with United Artists at the time.
John
- Did you let it go with Creed because you knew that it was just a matter of time
with Earl?
George
- I knew Earl was far from an ordinary guy, he was knocking me out and he didn't
play in the same way that all the folks who were knocking me out did. He was knocking
me out from a different point of view. His harmony and his approach to the guitar
was so simple and yet sophisticated at the same time. It wasn't just notes with
Earl, his stuff was thought out and he had those modern harmonies and futuristic
as a matter of fact. Ask anybody who studies Earl
Klugh
and they'll tell you that what he's playing is not something that just jumps into
your mind, its well thought out.
John
- Well, you know I've always appreciated Earl's way of playing guitar. I've always
loved that tenderness and he has sort of a soft warm feel to playing guitar. I've
always loved the song "White Rabbit"
I know about its origins and maybe that's why the song is partly dark and it's
almost intoxicating but I like the way you did it.
 |
|
George
- Well, let me tell you something funny about that song. I had never heard of
Jefferson Airplane and I didn't know what a White
Rabbit
was. It took a friend of mine ten years after the fact to explain to me what that
was and then I got mad when I heard what it was about. (laughing) It was about
drugs (laughing). I wondered why this had this terrible picture on the cover which
was not me by the way. Creed Taylor was smart he knew that if people saw that
picture they wouldn't know the difference between me and somebody else, he was
smart. So he put a guy on there that looked like me just enough with his arm in
a sling and half of his face was covered with white powder and that was of course
cocaine. I didn't know anything about this and really I didn't know what that
picture was about or what it meant, I never saw cocaine, I never knew what that
stuff was so it had no meaning for me. (laughing) Later when I found out I really
got mad (laughing). Then I heard people talking about the Jefferson Airplane and
I thought that's a Rock band and when I heard the real version of it I thought
it was kind of tasty. If I had heard that first I probably would have approached
it differently.
John
- With your faith though there are obviously songs you will not play, right?
George
- That's right.
John
- Well George, I know you have company there now and you have to go but I really
appreciate the time you took to tell us some stories, I look forward to the book.
I have to tell you also it has been fun contacting all the musicians for quotes
about you. There are sixty pages of quotes on there and each one of your albums
has a page.
George
- Get out of here.
John
- Yeah and we even call you the Beatles of Jazz.
George
- (laughing) O man, I like that!
John
- Take good care of yourself my friend.
George
- All right my friend.
