George Benson – Breezin' (Blue Vinyl)

1976 Classic On Blue Vinyl LP!

George Benson is simply one of the greatest guitarists in jazz history, but he is also an amazingly versatile musician, and that frustrates to no end critics who would paint him into a narrow bop box. He can play in just about any style - from swing to bop to R&B to pop - with supreme taste, a beautiful rounded tone, terrific speed, a marvelous sense of logic in building solos, and, always, an unquenchable urge to swing. His inspirations may have been Charlie Christian and Wes Montgomery - and he can do dead-on impressions of both - but his style is completely his own.

Not only can he play lead brilliantly, he is also one of the best rhythm guitarists around, supportive to soloists and a dangerous swinger, particularly in a soul-jazz format. Yet Benson can also sing in a lush, soulful tenor with mannerisms similar to those of Stevie Wonder and Donny Hathaway, and it is his voice that has proved to be more marketable to the public than his guitar. Benson is the guitar-playing equivalent of Nat King Cole - a fantastic pianist whose smooth way with a pop vocal eventually eclipsed his instrumental prowess in the marketplace - but unlike Cole, Benson has been granted enough time after his fling with the pop charts to reaffirm his jazz guitar credentials, which he still does at his concerts.

Benson is a ten time Grammy Award winning American musician/guitarist/vocalist. This one-time child prodigy topped the Billboard 200 in 1976 with the triple-platinum album, Breezin'. With the 1976 release Breezin', his debut album for Warner Brothers, Benson began to put his vocal on tracks such as This Masquerade.

Breezin' topped the Pop, Jazz and R&B album charts. At the 19th Grammy Awards (1976) Breezin' won Best Pop Instrumental Performance for Benson and Best Engineered Album, Non-Classical for Al Schmitt, while "This Masquerade" won Record of the Year for producer Tommy LiPuma and Benson. Benson uses a rest-stroke picking technique similar to that of gypsy jazz players such as Django Reinhardt. In recent years, Benson received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.

Classic Grammy winning album that contains 2 sought after classics: "This Masquerade" and "Breezin'." On color vinyl