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
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.
feature local music night saturday schedule trying
We are trying to schedule music every other Saturday night from 7 to 10 p.m. We like to feature local talent.
barry became belonged gigantic jazz music people sell tried white
R&B music became gigantic with people like Marvin Gaye and Barry White and Curtis Mayfield who became superstars. We tried to find a place where Jazz belonged because we didn't sell records.
bee dance disco dominated everybody fantastic forget gees late mode outside people queen record summer
Don't forget the late '70s was dominated by people like the Queen of Disco Donna Summer and everybody who was in that bag. We were already in dance mode, the Bee Gees were out with the most fantastic record the world had ever heard, so the world was in the mode. Anything outside of that mode was secondary.
became convinced cousin electric formed happened popular rest stepfather though
When I was 15 years old, my cousin and I formed a singing group called The Altaires. And, because we became the most popular singing group in the Tri-State area, the rest of the group convinced me I should play the guitar - even though I didn't own one! So what happened was, my stepfather actually made my first electric guitar for me for $23!
outlook pleased
The outlook for Georgia, I'm pleased to say, is good.
great
I like Simon Cowell - look at how many great artists have come out of the U.K. because of him.
moved
I moved to Hawaii from Inglewood, New Jersey. I had planned on retiring there.
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.
everybody gave opportunity record sell whether
I never gave up on that idea, you know, that jazz musicians have the same opportunity as everybody else and that it's what you put on that record that makes the difference whether you sell it or not or are able to get it into people's households.