George Benson was born on March 22, 1943. Benson is a guitarist and songwriter; he's best known as a jazz musician, but in the late 1970s and 1980s, he also had considerable success on the pop and R&B charts.
Benson was a child prodigy, playing the guitar in a Pittsburgh nightclub at the age of 8. He made his first recordings at the age of 9; "Lil' Georgie Benson" can be heard doing "Mona Lisa" on the album Inspiration, Benson's 2013 tribute to Nat King Cole.
For much of the 1960s, Benson was the featured guitarist in the small combo led by organist Brother Jack McDuff; highlights of McDuff's work from that era can be heard on The Prestige Years.
Benson's early solo albums in the late 1960s and early 1970s were a mix of his original compositions, Tin Pan Alley standards, and contemporary pop hits. The 1968 album Goodies was a typically eclectic assortment, including Horace Silver's modern jazz classic "Song for My Father," the movie theme "Windmills of Your Mind," the 1940s hit "That Lucky Old Sun," covers of recent hits by Carole King and Curtis Mayfield, and some Benson originals.
Those early albums were almost entirely instrumental, though Benson sang occasionally. When he signed with Warner Bros. Records in 1976, they expected him to continue as a guitarist and weren't all that enthusiastic about including a vocal track on his first Warner album, Breezin'. That song was "This Masquerade," a top ten hit on the pop and R&B charts, and the Grammy-winning Record of the Year. From that point on, his albums featured him as both singer and guitarist.
Benson's next pop hit came from a movie soundtrack. In 1977, boxer Muhammad Ali starred in his own biography, The Greatest, which featured Benson's performance of "The Greatest Love of All." Today, we usually remember the song from Whitney Houston's 1985 version. That wasn't the only time that an original Benson performance would be overshadowed by another singer having more success. Benson's 1984 album 20/20 included the song "Nothing's Gonna Change My Love For You," which was a minor hit in parts of Europe; in 1987, the song was a top twenty hit on the US pop charts for Glenn Medeiros.
Even if those songs might be "the ones that got away," the hits that Benson did have over the next few years were memorable; "On Broadway," "Give Me the Night," and "Turn Your Love Around" all made the top ten on both the pop and the R&B charts.
By the end of the 1980s, Benson was turning away from contemporary pop and returning to standards. Tenderly, from 1989, featured Great American Songbook tunes like "Stella by Starlight" and "Stardust." And with the shift back towards jazz came moves to jazz-centered record labels; Benson recorded for GRP in the late 90s and early 00s, and for Concord for a decade after that.
In 2009, the National Endowment for the Arts named Benson a Jazz Master, an honor granted to only a few musicians each year in recognition of long careers of outstanding work. He continues to perform and has a new album due to be released next month. Walking to New Orleans will be a tribute to early rock legends Fats Domino and Chuck Berry.
George Benson's autobiography is called Benson (e-book | print). In addition to the albums and songs linked above, much more of Benson's music is available for streaming or download at Hoopla and Freegal.