Did You Know...

Born in Pittsburgh, George Benson got his singing career underway at age ten. The requirements of Brother Jack McDuff's band when he was a teen led him to concentrate on his guitar work, thus depriving the world of an exceptional voice for a number of years. The guitar of George Benson, though, easily made up for the loss.

Signed to Columbia and later the distinguished jazz label, Verve, while he was in his twenties, Benson contributed his rapid-fire improvisation to recordings by Freddie Hubbard, Frank Sinatra and Miles Davis, among others. By this time he was a fixture in the realm of jazz guitar superstars, which translates into lots of tickets sold to hard-core jazz enthusiasts, but not a huge number of albums sold to the general public.

That changed in 1976, when Benson switched labels to Warner and hooked up with producer Tommy LiPuma. The result was the album Breezin', a primarily guitar-driven work that had Benson singing one song, 'This Masquerade.' On this track, Benson showed off his ability to perform a duet with himself, singing the same rapid notes he is playing on the guitar. The pop audience, exposed to this unusual technique, went wild and took the single into the Top Ten. More significantly, the new fans snapped up enough copies of Breezin' to make it a Top Ten hit as well, with multi-platinum sales, a near-miracle for an instrumental jazz album with one vocal track. Breezin' earned Benson two Grammys in 1976, including Record of the Year for 'This Masquerade.' He grabbed a third Grammy that year for 'Theme from Good King Bad.'