Toward the end of 1976, when George Benson had beaten the odds and gods of public taste and the music business and become a genuine pop star, he was part of a jazz all-stars program put together by Down Beat magazine for public television. Most of the musicians involved were, like Benson, men who had paid their dues in jazz and were making it big in fusion, or crossover, or jazz-rock music. The natural concern of a dedicated jazz lover was that the music on the program would find the low-est common denominator of the best-selling albums Benson, Chick Corea, Stanley Clarke, Billy Cobham, and Jean Luc-Ponty had ridden to commercial success. The fear was that, despite the proven creative musicianship of all concerned, eagerness to please the mass audience that had made them famous would lead the level of performance downward into boredom. Indeed, there was a brief opening period of obligatory jazz-rock get-the-money-and-run shuckin'. Then the all-stars settled down to serious busi-ness, and there were fine moments from all of the above, plus Thad Jones, Sonny Fortune, Bill Watrous, and Gary Burton. Benson's solo feature had all the elements, including those borrowed from Wes Montgomery, for which the top-40 devotees admire him. It was pleasant. But when Benson and Ron Carter combined for a guitar-bass duet on "Lover Man," the real George Benson stood out. Reducing his amplification nearly to that of an acoustic instrument, George con-structed a filigree accompaniment to Carter's solo, ultimately melding with the bassist in a stretch of mutual improvisation that was uncanny for the way the two men anticipated one another. His comp-ing behind Carter's rubato flight at the end of the piece was a model of what guitar accompaniment should be. The performance was worth warehouses full of Benson's hit album, and it was a reminder that when a superior musician achieves popular success with watered-down material he doesn't nec-essarily dilute his art, however rarely he may choose or be allowed to work at it. Besides, before we get too exercised about this business of popular acceptance versus artistic integrity, it may be well to keep in mind that Benson set out years ago to become a popular performer not a jazz musician. His public career began when he was an eight-year-old singer. His first record-ings in 1954, the year he began learning to play the guitar, were vocals. He has often said that he considers himself an entertainer who became a musician out of necessity. That makes Benson something of a hangover from an earlier era, when jazzmen like Earl Hines and Louis Armstrong, for all their artistic genius, never discussed their music in terms of art. They saw their task as entertaining, making people happy. It would take a mighty effort of critical dis-sembling to convince anyone with ears that Hines and Armstrong were not among the most impor-tant creative musicians of their time, which in Hines's case continues. And it would be foolish to seize upon Benson's commercial appeal as proof that his worth as a serious musician has diminished. The Armstrong of "West End Blues" and the Armstrong of "Blueberry Hill" dwelled not in separate planes of existence, but together. The Benson of "Lover Man" and the Benson of "Breezin"' don't seem to be at war with each other, certainly not in the mind of Benson. Be that as it may, given a chance, most serious listeners would take Louis's "West End Blues" and George's "Lover Man" every time whatever the entertainment merits of "Blueberry Hill" or "Breezin'."
Armstrong went through periods where he succumbed, or was conditioned, to his popular repertoire, but he still loved to blow, and there were times almost to the very end when he astonished his col-leagues with his creativity. Benson, even if he achieves Armstrong's commercial success, is incapable of jettisoning his artistic sensibility, which, however much he proclaims his artistic innocence, is ingrained through years of development as a creative improvising musician. Until he was 17, Benson was his own teacher, guided by basics picked up from his stepfather, Thomas Collier, an amateur guitarist and avid Charlie Christian fan. Benson had a rock and roll band in which he played guitar. But his vocals were the main attraction. George loved Christian, but he says it was the late Hank Garland's only jazz album that made him realize all the possibilities of the guitar." Garland, one of the most recorded country guitarists in the Nashville milieu of the 1950s and early Sixties, was a phenomenally gifted musician who could have had a stellar jazz career if he had been willing to take the pay cut. In 1969 he recorded a quartet album (Jazz Winds from a New Direction, Columbia CSP ACS 8372) with young Gary Burton on vibes, bassist Joe Benjamin, and drummer Joe Morello. Among other things Benson learned from the Garland record was the effec-tiveness of single note lines, an aspect that he quickly began to absorb into this own style. Inspired by Garland, Benson now began earnestly to pursue guitar knowledge. When guitar players came through his hometown of Pittsburgh, George studied their techniques and quizzed them endlessly about fingerings, chords, improvisational methods, amplifiers, strings . . . the full range of guitar lore. His persistence paid off in instruction from Grant Green, Eddie McFadden, Eddie Diehl, Thornel Schwartz, and John Pisano. Then, in 1961, when Benson was 18, Jack McDuff asked Benson to join his quartet, which was riding the wave of soul-jazz popularity. A number of organists rose to fame after Jimmy Smith showed the way for them in modern jazz. McDuff has been one of the most admired, popular, and durable. He began his jazz life as a bassist and was working with tenor saxophonist Johnny Griffin in Chicago when Art Blakey asked him to join the Jazz Messengers. McDuff recalls that it was during a period when Blakey was enamored of fast tempos on tunes that would often last an hour and a half. He didn't think he had the stamina a bass player would need for that kind of marathoning. Shortly after, he switched to piano, and worked steadily with trios that included bassists Leroy Vinnegar and Richard Evans long before they became well known. The change to the instrument that would be his vehicle to fame came about not because of inspi-ration from Jimmy Smith but as a matter of economics. He kept getting gigs at clubs which turned out to have organs, not pianos, and if he wanted to keep the contracts he had no choice but to play the organ. As he spent more and more time at the electronic keyboard, McDuff began to discover what he has since demonstrated thousands of times that the organ is "a hell of an instrument, a complete instrument, a dominant instrument." Most organ groups did not include horns at the time McDuff left tenor saxophonist Willis Jackson in 1960 to form his own quartet. But McDuff had developed a taste for the tenor-organ sound and has almost always included at least one saxophonist. One of his bands had two tenors. **//** —
These notes appeared on the original double-LP liner.
diegodobini2
George Benson & Jack McDuff
https://youtu.be/X9S2hb66XFU
alt:
https://youtu.be/wArwtkLAwIw
Original Liner Notes:
Toward the end of 1976, when George Benson had beaten the odds and gods of public taste and the music business and become a genuine pop star, he was part of a jazz all-stars program put together by Down Beat magazine for public television. Most of the musicians involved were, like Benson, men who had paid their dues in jazz and were making it big in fusion, or crossover, or jazz-rock music. The natural concern of a dedicated jazz lover was that the music on the program would find the low-est common denominator of the best-selling albums Benson, Chick Corea, Stanley Clarke, Billy Cobham, and Jean Luc-Ponty had ridden to commercial success. The fear was that, despite the proven creative musicianship of all concerned, eagerness to please the mass audience that had made them famous would lead the level of performance downward into boredom. Indeed, there was a brief opening period of obligatory jazz-rock get-the-money-and-run shuckin'. Then the all-stars settled down to serious busi-ness, and there were fine moments from all of the above, plus Thad Jones, Sonny Fortune, Bill Watrous, and Gary Burton. Benson's solo feature had all the elements, including those borrowed from Wes Montgomery, for which the top-40 devotees admire him. It was pleasant. But when Benson and Ron Carter combined for a guitar-bass duet on "Lover Man," the real George Benson stood out. Reducing his amplification nearly to that of an acoustic instrument, George con-structed a filigree accompaniment to Carter's solo, ultimately melding with the bassist in a stretch of mutual improvisation that was uncanny for the way the two men anticipated one another. His comp-ing behind Carter's rubato flight at the end of the piece was a model of what guitar accompaniment should be. The performance was worth warehouses full of Benson's hit album, and it was a reminder that when a superior musician achieves popular success with watered-down material he doesn't nec-essarily dilute his art, however rarely he may choose or be allowed to work at it. Besides, before we get too exercised about this business of popular acceptance versus artistic integrity, it may be well to keep in mind that Benson set out years ago to become a popular performer not a jazz musician. His public career began when he was an eight-year-old singer. His first record-ings in 1954, the year he began learning to play the guitar, were vocals. He has often said that he considers himself an entertainer who became a musician out of necessity. That makes Benson something of a hangover from an earlier era, when jazzmen like Earl Hines and Louis Armstrong, for all their artistic genius, never discussed their music in terms of art. They saw their task as entertaining, making people happy. It would take a mighty effort of critical dis-sembling to convince anyone with ears that Hines and Armstrong were not among the most impor-tant creative musicians of their time, which in Hines's case continues. And it would be foolish to seize upon Benson's commercial appeal as proof that his worth as a serious musician has diminished. The Armstrong of "West End Blues" and the Armstrong of "Blueberry Hill" dwelled not in separate planes of existence, but together. The Benson of "Lover Man" and the Benson of "Breezin"' don't seem to be at war with each other, certainly not in the mind of Benson. Be that as it may, given a chance, most serious listeners would take Louis's "West End Blues" and George's "Lover Man" every time whatever the entertainment merits of "Blueberry Hill" or "Breezin'."
Armstrong went through periods where he succumbed, or was conditioned, to his popular repertoire, but he still loved to blow, and there were times almost to the very end when he astonished his col-leagues with his creativity. Benson, even if he achieves Armstrong's commercial success, is incapable of jettisoning his artistic sensibility, which, however much he proclaims his artistic innocence, is ingrained through years of development as a creative improvising musician. Until he was 17, Benson was his own teacher, guided by basics picked up from his stepfather, Thomas Collier, an amateur guitarist and avid Charlie Christian fan. Benson had a rock and roll band in which he played guitar. But his vocals were the main attraction. George loved Christian, but he says it was the late Hank Garland's only jazz album that made him realize all the possibilities of the guitar." Garland, one of the most recorded country guitarists in the Nashville milieu of the 1950s and early Sixties, was a phenomenally gifted musician who could have had a stellar jazz career if he had been willing to take the pay cut. In 1969 he recorded a quartet album (Jazz Winds from a New Direction, Columbia CSP ACS 8372) with young Gary Burton on vibes, bassist Joe Benjamin, and drummer Joe Morello. Among other things Benson learned from the Garland record was the effec-tiveness of single note lines, an aspect that he quickly began to absorb into this own style. Inspired by Garland, Benson now began earnestly to pursue guitar knowledge. When guitar players came through his hometown of Pittsburgh, George studied their techniques and quizzed them endlessly about fingerings, chords, improvisational methods, amplifiers, strings . . . the full range of guitar lore. His persistence paid off in instruction from Grant Green, Eddie McFadden, Eddie Diehl, Thornel Schwartz, and John Pisano. Then, in 1961, when Benson was 18, Jack McDuff asked Benson to join his quartet, which was riding the wave of soul-jazz popularity. A number of organists rose to fame after Jimmy Smith showed the way for them in modern jazz. McDuff has been one of the most admired, popular, and durable. He began his jazz life as a bassist and was working with tenor saxophonist Johnny Griffin in Chicago when Art Blakey asked him to join the Jazz Messengers. McDuff recalls that it was during a period when Blakey was enamored of fast tempos on tunes that would often last an hour and a half. He didn't think he had the stamina a bass player would need for that kind of marathoning. Shortly after, he switched to piano, and worked steadily with trios that included bassists Leroy Vinnegar and Richard Evans long before they became well known. The change to the instrument that would be his vehicle to fame came about not because of inspi-ration from Jimmy Smith but as a matter of economics. He kept getting gigs at clubs which turned out to have organs, not pianos, and if he wanted to keep the contracts he had no choice but to play the organ. As he spent more and more time at the electronic keyboard, McDuff began to discover what he has since demonstrated thousands of times that the organ is "a hell of an instrument, a complete instrument, a dominant instrument." Most organ groups did not include horns at the time McDuff left tenor saxophonist Willis Jackson in 1960 to form his own quartet. But McDuff had developed a taste for the tenor-organ sound and has almost always included at least one saxophonist. One of his bands had two tenors.
**//**
—
These notes appeared on the original double-LP liner.
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