"Breezin'", George Benson
Named after the nation's first President, American jazz guitarist and singer George Washington Benson is a founding father of sorts. He helped spur on "smooth jazz" - contemporary jazz played to a lighter, less intense and more commercial groove. The form has been both praised and damned for the same reasons, and it's also been damned with faint praise. But this video, my Music Video Of the Week, proves, contemporary jazz is clearly a very popular form of music.
Benson proved that with definite clarity when he released Breezin', is fifteenth album, fifty years ago this month. Benson and his sidemen had recorded It was a huge success, topping not only the Billboard album chart but also the magazine's R&B and jazz album charts as well. The album featured Benson's covers of Leon Russell's This Masquerade" (Benson's version became the definitive cover) and José Feliciano's "Affirmation."
The title track is an instrumental written by Bobby Womack and originally recorded by Hungarian jazz guitarist Gábor Szabó, and his recording was produced by Tommy LiPuma. LiPuma would produce Benson's Breezin' album (which was recorded in three days in January 1976) and so would oversee Benson's cover.
This clip is a video of Benson performing "Breezin'" at a jazz festival (neither the location nor the date are identified) on a cloudy day with occasional rain, but the people in the audience are too busy listening to and enjoying Benson's playing to care about the weather. You shouldn't either, however lousy the weather is today where you live. Just enjoy "Breezin'."
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