Benson still loves life on the road

By MARCUS BRODGEN


Ask George Benson who he's collaborated with during his eight-Grammy career and you get a who's who of the American jazz and R&B scene.

"Well, there's Freddie Hubbard, Herbie Hancock, Quincy Jones, Stanley Turrentine, Ron Carter ... and I know Smokey Robinson, Luther Vandross, Peabo Bryson, Stevie Wonder ... all the cats," Benson says in a laidback, throaty rasp.

Special attention is reserved for jazz luminary John Coltrane, who Benson knew as "quiet, except when he put that horn in his mouth, and then he became a giant". And Miles Davis, "the genius of our time. He knew talent ... he could spot talent a mile away".

Musicians come and go, yet 60-year-old Benson has been at the forefront of the jazz and R&B scene for 46 years.

The secret, he says, is that he was never pigeonholed into one musical category.

Born in Pittsburgh in 1943, Benson was only 8 when he started singing, dancing and playing a handmade ukelele on street corners.

After a stint in reform school, he wound up in New York and released his first album, The New Boss Guitar, in 1964.

"I never said, 'Hey, I'm a jazz player.'

"I think the reason I'm so successful is that they were never able to categorise me."

Benson's diversity is celebrated by his greatest 1980s success, the triple-Grammy-winning Give Me the Night, which went after jazz, R&B and pop audiences but caused his former audience to label him "a traitor to jazz".

"The problem was you couldn't sell records in the jazz world when I came to New York. They said that if I sold 10,000 records in the jazz world I would be a jazz superstar, but I never went for that.

"I was a singer who happened to play guitar - two things that have kept me alive.

"We've sold 40 million since then."

Benson says that when he started out the music he was playing was mostly improvised.

"There was not very much melodic line, so there's not a whole load of memorable things that street people could get off on."

He says that compared with the improvisational jazz music of old, today's music - or "urban music, street music" - is a lot simpler and has more bass than its predecessors.

"When my son heard Earth Wind and Fire, he said, 'I know that's an old group.'

"When I asked why, he said: 'There's no bass in it.'

"He said the drums were too soft and that was the only thing that made him not like the group."

Music today, Benson says, is based on hooks.

"I like the simplicity of today's music, even though anybody could sing it.

"There's always some hook, something that people can remember, often borrowed from the oldtimers.

"They use sampling and so on, but some of that stuff really turns out some really good gems."

To illustrate his point, he bursts into a couple of bars of "yeah, yeah, yeah" from Usher's latest offering Confessions.

"Every era there's always some people who stand out and Usher's one of them today.

"He has a really tantalising voice. He's believable."

Benson says that the great singers are those who can communicate with their audience, "a person that gets over big and leaves a deep impression.

"It's in the character of their voice, how they use their talent to communicate, they are believable.

"When they sing you believe every word."

After a career spawning 17 hit records in the United States and 22 hits worldwide - among them the 1976 blockbuster Breezin' - Benson is at present on a 24-gig world tour.

While others of his age are winding down their careers, and settling back on their earnings - Benson was once referred to as a multi-million dollar, multi-national corporation - he still loves life on the road.

"People have to tell me how old I am - I never think about age.

"I've been on the road for maybe six months because I've been moving all the time and accomplishing things, and so time has a way of zipping by.

"The Bible gives us a better answer to that than anything when it says, 'We appear for a short time like a mist.'

"That says it all," says Benson, who became a Jehovah's Witness when he picked up a Watchtower in 1979.

For the future, he is looking forward to meeting his fans in New Zealand and to seeing who plays him in the upcoming movie on Marvin Gaye.

"There's a great guitar player and his name is Russell Malone," he says. "Or maybe Denzel Wash ... No."

On stage

*Who: George Benson

*Where and when: Michael Fowler Centre, Wellington, Oct 20; Auckland Town Hall, Oct 21, 22

- NZPA