George Benson
George Benson
George Benson is an American musician, guitarist and singer-songwriter. He began his professional career at 21 as a jazz guitarist. Benson uses a rest-stroke picking technique similar to that of gypsy jazz players such as Django Reinhardt...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionJazz Singer
Date of Birth22 March 1943
CityPittsburgh, PA
CountryUnited States of America
allowed best classical finger great guitar happened listening middle name proponent record
Andres Segovia, the great name for guitar, he put classical guitar on the map. He was the proponent of it, the best in the world. So I was listening to a record that he had made, and a little bauble happened in the middle of the record. A finger slipped, and I said, 'Wait a minute. He's not allowed to make mistakes,' - my mind.
bulk depends fans jazz love maybe rhythm song tune understood
The jazz rhythm won't be understood by the bulk of my audience. That's the problem. We can get away with maybe one tune a night. It depends on where we place it. A song like 'Beyond the Sea,' the fans love that. It's fresh.
caught electric hands messing met seven stepfather tried
My stepfather met my mother when I was seven years old, and he was a guitar player. So he caught me messing with his guitar, his electric guitar, and he tried to show me some chords, but my hands were too small.
hated
I've always hated rejection; I only want to go out there when I know I've got it right.
biggest change gonna love number song
My biggest song in the world is 'Nothing's Gonna Change My Love for You.' All over the world, it's number one on the whole planet.
amp electric pawn sat stepfather store
My stepfather had an electric guitar. He went to his pawn store one day to get a guitar and an amp, and I couldn't understand what I was hearing. All afternoon, I just sat against the amp and let it reverberate through me. Something must have stuck.
biggest concerts drag fan great jazz lived lover music sure
We don't live in a jazz world, unfortunately. I think if I had lived in a jazz world, I would have done OK. I'm not sure I would have done great. I'm a lover of jazz music, so I would have been happy, don't get me wrong. I go to jazz concerts like the biggest jazz fan in world. The drag is that I don't play jazz for a living.
approach beat classic funky grant great heard hold john larry love mccartney nova paul sure
'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.
audience ballads dominated great hear swing
One thing all the way through the show to me is boring. I don't care how great the artist is. I find that if my audience is very young, and they want to hear very young songs, my show will be dominated by that. But there'll be some ballads here and there and some swing tunes.
life
My whole life, I've never worried about being No. 1, because that's the guy they've got to get out of there.
family good life rob simply
Life isn't all me. I have a family to support. I can't rob them of a good life simply because I want to play something.
imagined love music rest
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.
growth higher percent roughly three year
We're projecting roughly a three percent growth this year and that could get even higher as we go forward.
heard holland knocked people rock williams
I have not heard a whole lot of the rock genre. I tell you what knocked me out though. I was in Holland and I went to a Robbie Williams concert. There were 50,000 people there. That was an eye-opener.