A Conversation with George Benson – HuffPost 10.21.11

Mike Ragogna: George, on your new album Guitar Man, you play the classics.

George Benson: I’ve done two albums for Concord Records, one was with Al Jarreau and it did very well for us. The second album was called Songs And Stories, and it had good songs and good performances, but I promised them I would do an album that was more jazz-oriented. This is actually one of the last projects I will be doing for the record company unless we find something else to do, but I am really happy how it came out. It wasn’t a high-budgeted album, so we decided to make records like we did in the old days; we would go into the studio with some great musicians, hash out some ideas that we have, and put them down to see what happens. In this case, because all of the songs are proven songs, they are classics, except for a couple of original ideas. It was a lot easier than I imagined it would be and a lot more fun. I got a chance to improvise the way I like, just off the cuff–someone goes bip, and I go bop. (laughs) The best way to make records is the way we made this record.

MR: What went into choosing the songs?

GB: Well, first off, the song “My Cherie Amour.” About two years ago, we did a tribute to Stevie Wonder in Hollywood. He heard me sing the song–they chose that song for me to do out of all of the artists that were there. So, I sang it, and Stevie Wonder was in the audience and he jumped up out of his seat and said, “Yeah!” He came backstage and said, “George, you must record that song,” so I promised him that I would and I finally got around to doing it. But if you notice, in the center of the song, I did my own arrangement, something I made up on the spot that came out so wonderful, I was really surprised. I can’t wait for Stevie to hear this. I don’t think he’s heard it yet, but I hope he’s surprised and likes it as well as we did.

MR: “I Want To Hold Your Hand” sounds very Breezin‘-era–strings-laden and inspired in the way you made some of your older classics.

GB: “I Want To Hold Your Hand” is a great classic by Paul McCartney and John Lennon, I sure love that song. I did like the classic version, a rock-oriented song, then someone heard me do it with the Grant Green approach–Grant Green and Larry Young did it, with a bossa nova beat on the funky side. It came out so beautiful and I thought, “Man, that is a classic.” As reluctant as I was to get into that–because I figured that’s the end of that, those guys have done it they put it to bed for all of time–someone heard me play it and said, “George, you could do a great job on that.” So, after spending two or three years of messing with it, we put it on tape. It came out beautiful, it’s me playing the acoustic guitar…not an expensive instrument, it’s a relatively cheap instrument. I had a lot of fun doing it, and I like what happened on it.

MR: A lot of people recorded “Tequilla,” but your version injects more soul soul into the arrangement.

GB: My wife heard me messing with it because I practice almost every morning at the house, and I was moving around and she was cooking breakfast and she was moving around. I said, “Wow, I think I can do this.” I played through it and I finally got comfortable playing it, and I said, “Maybe we should try this out in the studio.” When you put on Harvey Mason and Joe Sample, man you’ve got some improvisational geniuses and people that know what to do with a song. It really came out much greater than I thought.

MR: When you’re in the studio with these guys, do you use charts or mainly improv?

GB: I do what they call head arrangements, meaning it comes right off the top of my head, just like “On Broadway.” I change the whole song by changing the rhythm pattern, and it’s off the cuff, it’s not written down. I just hum it to the guys and say, “Lets do it this way, and we have arguments and they say, “It doesn’t go like that, and I say, “I know, let’s just do it this way for now.” They’re used to that now, guys I work with like Harvey Mason know how I am. I do simple things. In the case of “Paper Moon,” everybody knows “Paper Moon.” They know how it goes, and I was going to sing it, but when I heard it as an instrumental, I said, “No, no vocal on this,” because I can hear Nat Cole singing it while I’m playing it. I said, “That’s good enough for me, I’m not going to mess with Nat Cole.” It was a lot of fun, it’s those kinds of vibes on skeletons; I do skeletal arrangements to allow for their improvisational skills. What they can add to a song, I could never dream it up myself, so I let them do it off the cuff.

MR: I was surprised by your new version of “Tenderly,” how you took the solo approach.

GB: Yeah, I had recorded the song “Tenderly” before, but not like this. This is a different version, because that version might be on my D’Angelico, which is a very expensive, acoustic/electric guitar, and I tried to get it to sound as acoustic as I could, it worked out fantastic. I love the Johnny Smith version, and that’s where I got inspiration from, so I used some of his technique or his harmonic approach and I’ve mixed it with things I’ve learned over the years. I remember playing for Johnny Smith once, and he was knocked out, and he came backstage and I didn’t know he was in the audience. I was a little ashamed…if I had known he was in the audience I wouldn’t have played it. When he said he’d loved it, I knew I had really accomplished something. So, I decided to put it on this record too, and this version is a little more straight ahead, but it’s nicely done.

MR: By the way, on “Danny Boy,” the guitar sounds like bagpipes. How did you do it?

GB: (laughs) I was thinking about how much I love bagpipes, and I was thinking, “How come we can’t make the guitar sound like bagpipes?” So, I headed in that direction. I found out the phrasing of the bagpipe, and I put that in my head, but there is a drone underneath. There is the 5th or the root going right through the melodies, and that, along with the melodies, is very haunting, so I learned how to do it. I never intended to play that on stage, but my bass player, Stanley Banks, heard me play it one day and he said, “George, you have to play that on stage.” I said I would never do it, and he said, “Try it.” When I played that in Ireland–I think I was in Dublin, Ireland, when I first played it–then we went to Belfast and I played it in front of a large audience and we recorded it on video. It knocked everybody out, so I’ve been playing it ever since, but I couldn’t wait to put it on acoustic guitar where it belongs.

MR: With your amazing career, what advice do you have for new artists?

GB: If you play music for the right reasons, the rest of the things will come. The right reason to play music is that you love it. That’s why I play music. I never imagined that I was going to be doing this, especially because I never thought of myself as an instrumentalist. I like to sing because my mother was a singer. She sang to me all the time, so I learned to love singing. I did have a career as little 10-year-old George Benson. I made my first record as a vocalist, but I’ve been playing guitar since I was 9. Years later, I started showing some progress, so I started getting calls, but it was the love of the instrument that took us to where we went to one day. I saw an article in the newspaper where they called me a “guitarist,” not a “guitar player.” Boy, that was the defining moment of my life. I couldn’t believe it; the review wasn’t good and he didn’t say anything especially good about my playing, but he did call me a guitarist, and that sparked me and made me go to another level. I started practicing to live up to that title.

MR: George, thanks, I’m so glad I got to talk with you.

GB: I loved talking with you too, thank you.

Transcribed by Theo Shier