George Benson
Beyond The Blue Horizon

I hate Quincy Jones…

There were times when my father, coming back home, would bring some new record with him. More than anything, I remember two cases (or better, aside from the numerous Sinatra records, the only ones worth mentioning): “Live in New York” by good old Springsteen and a collection of some George Benson.

I must have been around 11 or 12 at the time: I utterly ignored the first (a regret I would have years later); about the second, my father had said “boh, they told me he’s a guitarist.” There was very little guitar in that best of, although from the cover and the booklet it did seem that this guy had quite a bit to do with it: I just recognized “Give me the night,” because they sometimes played it on the radio as interlude music, and then I quite happily tossed it into oblivion. It fell into my hands again years later (a few months ago): it’s pure and crystalline 80s pop, but… but there’s something, something different in that way of playing the guitar, in the mood of “This masquerade,” and especially in the solo with attached vocalizations of “Love ballad.” I search, I find, I discover that the gentleman in question is actually a jazz guitarist with two big ones, who ended up in the skilled (horrific?) hands of Jacko's producer, who brought him to the forefront of the global pop scene with the album “Give me the night” of '80. But that, fortunately, is another story…

Before that, in the 60s, Benson, now an elderly gentleman returned to more congenial jazz shores, was sailing full steam ahead among collaborations with people like Wes Montgomery (of whom he was considered the most likely heir), Stanley Turrentine, and also with the divine Miles in heaven and was particularly appreciated for his ability to combine absolute mastery of the instrument with a phantasmagoric speed, fantasy, and unparalleled stylistic eclecticism. In '71, our man is in the CTI stables of Creed Taylor and calls with him a certain Jack DeJohnette (I won’t even tell you what instrument), Ron Carter on bass, Clarence Palmer on the organ, Michael Cameron and Albert Nicholson on percussion. To do what? Because Benson knows it, Miles has said it with a double album, that the road to jazz is open, open to rock, to funk, to guitars, to soul: the next big thing is fusion. And how can we inaugurate a great fusion record? Eh eh… Do you like music? Yes? Then you’ll have “Kind of blue” at home: good, go get it and put it in the player, if you don’t have the disc in question, get it (madmen!). Everyone knows how it begins: “So what,” Amen. Good, listen to all this stuff again. Done?

Well, now take the album I’m reviewing and start it. Benson and his gang of mad irreverent ones take the Davis composition and smash it, mistreat it, scramble it, and turn it inside out until it becomes unrecognizable, with that start with a deep bass, which takes on the task of presenting the theme, DeJohnette going wild on the skins, and the organ painting smoky, dark scenarios, showing the black soul contained in this piece, pushing it into territories close to funk and soul, far from the swinging, nocturnal, and terribly classy air of the Davis masterpiece. Until the arrival of good Benson, who weaves riffs on riffs, note on note, all with an unexpected logic and clarity of ideas, showing, as if it were still needed, how versatile and quietly usable the guitar is, even in genres from which it has been typically excluded like jazz. This is fusion. And as in every respectable jazz standard, the pre-closing is entrusted to the rhythm section, with Carter and DeJohnette chasing, rolling, battling in a duel that seems endless, the two always appear on the verge of calming down, only to return, gently yet vigorously to fighting, until the finale with an ad-lib theme, which first, however, contorts on itself like a snake. These 9 minutes and twenty might have been enough to give meaning to this album.

Instead, listening to pearls like “The gentle rain” does good to the soul, and, let’s be clear, doing it by the sea is terribly cool: hear how sensible yet sentimental, without theatrics, Benson’s phrasing is, every note in the right place, creating that intangible late summer atmosphere that I can’t explain, then the organ steps on the pedal into territories of happy memories, which overwhelm the listener more and more, until the return of a satisfied calm with the central theme. Ah… “All clear” is almost a divertissement of ours, the point is it amuses us too: it anticipates certain of his intuitions, besides highlighting once again his incredible technical skill, as well as the quality of the rhythmic section that supports him; in short, you'll easily find yourself pretending to have a guitar in your hands making faces like a seasoned guitar hero. “Ode to a Kudu” is another gem: it recalls certain landscapes, airy, sunny and melancholic, described by Paolo Conte, lost between milongas and blue Hawaii, a dream in a dream, with a dreamy guitar tracing the lines of a design that it is up to us to color. Gem within a gem.

Finally, “Somewhere in the East” takes us indeed toward oriental or exotic worlds, towards dreamlike and wild environments, among unusual beasts stirring in the air and sounds of obscure origin painted by the musical instruments, which, in perhaps the most experimental song of the album that harks back to certain Mingusian atmospheres, tilt unsteadily towards a conclusion that seems more of a ‘see you later’ than a goodbye, because our men know you’ll soon return to their shores to hear their jazz rock wonders again. A jewel to unearth, something that might make fusion appeal to certain purists, a work not shocking nor revolutionary but that gradually grows on you. A work I risked never getting to hear because buried in the past of an artist who, with Warner’s help, six years from then would move on to more overtly pop albums, making us lose, as the booklet says, “his lucid and adventurous playing”.

For this, I hate Quincy Jones.