Is it Just Me? I can't stand George Benson's singing - sounds like....

[AllenLowe]

....he's always preening for the judges on America's Got Talent.

I ask because I just posted this on Facebook to a largely negative response.

Yes, I know he's a great guitarist, but the last clip I saw of him he played mostly stock phrases and cliches. This is the price a jazz musician often pays for that kind of popularity.

But his singing is slick and bland and shallow, to my ears.

 

 

[John L]

I like the way he sings Masquerade but can take or leave a lot of the rest of his vocals.  

[kh1958]

It's me also (I don't like his singing, or really his guitar playing after Bad Benson).

[Ken Dryden]

I remember one of Benson’s Warner Bros. CDs where he started singing in a song in the wrong place, stopped immediately and yet they released the track as is. I asked a label rep at a jazz conference why they didn’t edit it out or do a re-take and got the reply, “We thought it was a good take otherwise.” Maybe they were running over budget…

Edited November 26, 2023 by Ken Dryden

[JSngry]

50 year old pop music...who cares? 

[sonnymax]

 

[felser]

I like his singing on the early WB recordings, found it incredibly stiff when he did the Abbey Road album on Verve.

[sgcim]

After playing "The Greatest Love" hundreds of times on gigs, I decided to take out Benson's version from the library. I couldn't believe how corny and saccharine it was. If it wasn't a library record, I would've smashed it into pieces. Then I played "Masquerade" with the blues drummer/vocalist Charles 'Honeyboy' Otis, and it was literally a religious experience. So I checked GB's version out again at the library with the same result. I bought GB's albums "Giblet Gravy, and it sounded like a mediocre R&B album, and the one he did with Joe Farrell, and it sounded like a bad New Age album.

His earlier stuff was much better, but I read his autobiography, and it ends with him talking with a fan of his talking about how Charlie Parker killed jazz by alienating people with its complexity. He then reassures the reader that HIS music has taken the harmony of Bird and made it palatable to a larger audience with whatever the heck he's doing, and that the future of jazz is safe in his hands....or something to that effect.

[JSngry]

19 hours ago, AllenLowe said:

....he's always preening for the judges on America's Got Talent.

This makes no sense. America's Got Talent began in 2006. Benson was semi-retired by then.

Maybe you're saying that he was decades ahead of his time, in which case, no, not really. 

[mjazzg]

'On Broadway' always works for me 

[JSngry]

4 minutes ago, sgcim said:

... "Masquerade" with the blues drummer/vocalist Charles 'Honeyboy' Otis, and it was literally a religious experience. 

This is hardly religious, but I think it might have been the first cover of the song?

Flip side of "Rainy Days & Mondays" iirc. My sister had the 45 for some reason. 

[Dan Gould]

Soft spot here for "Lucky Old Sun" which I heard on some compilation that I couldn't even find on discogs.  I consider that the first "vocal" I heard by Benson because I knew the other hits already mentioned here (and which I also have a soft spot for) before I knew anything about jazz so they are colored by a certain ingrained pop memory.

[sgcim]

8 minutes ago, JSngry said:

This is hardly religious, but I think it might have been the first cover of the song?

Flip side of "Rainy Days & Mondays" iirc. My sister had the 45 for some reason. 

Nice Carpenters bossa nova.

[JSngry]

Is that what it is? 

[rostasi]

Faux-bo.

[gvopedz]

"This Masquerade" with Karen Carpenter and Ella Fitzgerald

 

[Brad]

I haven’t listened to him in years but used to like him when I was in that phase. I just listened to Masquerade and don’t have an issue with his singing; I liked it. 

[mikeweil]

There is a Jon Hendricks album where he scats which is really great. Sings a vocalese solo, too, from Feeddie Freeloader. Excellent.

The other stuff I heard sounds okay to me, there are a lot of jazz instrumentalists whoses singing is a lot  worse, but quite a few who are much better singers, too. 

[T.D.]

1 hour ago, mjazzg said:

'On Broadway' always works for me 

That was my favorite, too. I haven't listened to GB's vocals in ages (unless he randomly pops up on radio), but thought he was OK back in the '70s when he was topping the charts.

[felser]

1 hour ago, mjazzg said:

'On Broadway' always works for me 

The one I like best from that era is "The World Is A Ghetto".

[HutchFan]

I enjoy George Benson -- both his singing & his guitar work. 

My father loved Weekend in L.A. and played it often.  I still have the album from my dad's collection.  It's music I grew up with.

[JSngry]

 

[AllenLowe]

his singing is just awful, has a horrible, flaccid quality to it - also, I didn't say he had been on America's Got Talent, just that he always appears to be on the show when he is singing. But that Moody thing is just....well, if I heard it blind I would think of it as just another soft jazz thing.

Clearly I am fading into the minority here. He just sounds to me like the musical equivalent of processed food. And I think the Moody vocal sounds like the kind of bad singer who sits in at jam sessions and who you can't seem to get rid of.

 

 

[rostasi]

My GB story is that when I would make regular trips
to Linz, Austria, there was a wonderful restaurant
named “p’aa”. A separate room in the back away from
the main dining area used to show a Benson concert video.
After not being able to really get away from seeing it on
this huge screen, I’d laugh at the utter ridiculousness of
him grandstanding to an audience that was damn near
90% old women who were just falling all over themselves
just to get near him. It was pretty pathetic looking.

The reason why this has stayed with me for so long
is that I swear that this was the only video they had
in this back bar because EVERY YEAR, without fail,
whenever I walked into this restaurant (usually 3 or 4
times/year), it would be playing.

I gotta think that that was the real reason that it closed around 2017.

Edited November 27, 2023 by rostasi

[sgcim]

The story I heard from one of Attila Zoller's students was that at the time of Wes Montgomery's death, Creed Taylor was desperate to find another jazz guitarist to replace Wes on CTI, so he went to Attila, and every other jazz guitarist in NYC, and every one of them turned it down out of respect for Wes. The only one who agreed to do it was GB.