George Benson – HuffPost 10.21.11

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

George Benson: 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.