George Benson Quotes
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I've had the pleasure of playing with the baddest Jazz cats on the planet.
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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.
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The greatest teacher is just going out and playing.
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I like to sing because my mother was a singer. She sang to me all the time, so I learned to love singing. I did have a career as little 10-year-old George Benson. I made my first record as a vocalist, but I've been playing guitar since I was 9.
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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.
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The greatest guitar player in the world today for me is Paco de Lucia, who is actually Spanish.
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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.
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I moved to Hawaii from Inglewood, New Jersey. I had planned on retiring there.
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I think I'm more entertainer than musician. I like to get with the crowd, make this night special for them.
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You might not feel like playing pretty all the time. Instead, you might want to play something nasty....you might want to play something out of context with the tune. It might be a note that creates so much tension it becomes unpleasant, but you want it to sound that way.
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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.
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The jazz always seems to automatically come out, because it was from my jazz days that I learned that spark. And the nice thing with my band and this repertoire, which is a complete joy, is that we go beyond just playing chords and melody. It is music that can stretch out.
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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.
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I've done two albums for Concord Records; one was with Al Jarreau and it did very well for us. The second album was called 'Songs And Stories,' and it had good songs and good performances, but I promised them I would do an album that was more jazz-oriented.
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The outlook for Georgia, I'm pleased to say, is good.
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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.
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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.
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I study the Bible constantly. I teach the Bible. You know, I'm a Bible conductor, and I have a lot of people studies. But also, I see how small things really help people to get over humps in their life. Gives them direction.
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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!
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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.
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I keep my ears open. The world can change overnight; that's what happens in this world. You never know. You have to keep your eyes and ears open. If you can't keep up, you ain't gonna catch up. I've been making records since 1953, and you just have to keep up.
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I haven't done anything with Chick Corea. He had a group called Return to Forever, and everyone in the group became a superstar. I would really like to work with him.
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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.
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I've always hated rejection; I only want to go out there when I know I've got it right.