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Cover Story

GEORGE BENSON

Time was of the essence, so I jumped in with both feet. Did you really start your professional career at age eight? “Hmm, let’s just say they made my parents an offer they couldn’t refuse.” Is that right, I was thinking? I wanted to explore that topic further, but my time with Mr. Benson was limited. Our conversation was sandwiched between others. So as not to waste his time or mind, I shot from the hip, again. I am fascinated with Take Five. I love what you did with it. Why did you choose that piece? “I don’t know if you know who [guitarist] Phil Upchurch is. He is on several of my albums. Phil is a star in his own right and has a lot of records on his own. He worked with a lot of people out of Chicago like Curtis Mayfield and the Impressions. Like me, he started out as a child prodigy. And, he came to me with this arrangement of Take Five that was quite different from what I had been hearing. I was attracted to this arrangement, so I said, ‘come on, go in the studio with me and let’s do this thing.’ And that’s how it got started.” Take Five was recorded in 1974 on the Bad Benson album.

2007 COVER STORIES
Nov/Dec Issue 2007: Candy Dulfer
July/August Issue 2007: Euge Groove
May/June Issue 2007: Norman Brown
March/April Issue 2007: Jeff Golub
January/February Issue 2007: Al Jarreau

The interesting thing about Take Five for me is the driving beat. The music just wouldn’t stop. I shared that observation with Benson and this is what he had to say about that. “It’s a strange thing about me in those days. I was making records for Creed Taylor, CTI Records. I had been playing in every kind of club in America. For ten years straight, I played in a club just about every day. My chops were so on the money that I could play just about anything I could think of. The problem was, I didn’t know when to stop and the record producer knew that. So, he tried to exhaust my ideas by letting me play on and on. I didn’t like [to do that] later in my career. I looked back at that time and said, ‘why did he let me do that, you know?’ [It was] because I could.”

He walks in the newness of each day. I resist change and he does not. You’ve learned something somewhere that taught you to go with the flow and make the best of it. “I think so. I think the key is to listen to what young people are talking about. Although we don’t always agree with them and they lack experience, they do have ideas. Most of their ideas begin with what we give them and they just add their own twist to it. They kind of take away the fat, so to speak. It’s always interesting because there are no two people alike.” That’s true. “I listen to them and I say, ‘I never looked at [this or that] from another point of view. That’s how I get a lot of my ideas. I try to stay current with the new rhythms they are creating. I add my experience to enhance what I think their ideas are [and] to marry their ideas and give them a little more sophistication. I end up with a product that does not go overboard, I hope, and something that has a little more artistic value to it than the norm.”

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