George Benson plays like his soul depends on it. It’s like his very being craves it and needs it to breathe and live and vibrate and connect and speak.
When you listen to his music, it is as if you are being let through the gates to a land of a grand and groovy adventure — like something on the most exciting midway, and all about flights of sonic fancy. The adventure spans everything from the most tender, almost whispered, and intimately shared, to breathtaking, soul-shaking, finger-snapping, head-bopping, and foot-tapping — strap in, hold on tight.
The genres mix and play with each other. It is a collaborative kind of defiance of genre freedom. Sometimes it is a “genre vacation,” and when the music does live within a genre, the whole of the genre is explored; the boundaries are pushed and stretched.
The guitar is an extension of the creative halls of his artistic mind. A George Benson track is impressionable and unforgettable. So many of his inspired album names say it all when it comes to the language of the soul, with titles like Songs and Stories, Givin’ It Up, Irreplaceable, Standing Together, and That’s Right. The language of the soul makes you dig it.