George Benson Quotations

My whole career from the early 70s on has been mind-blowing. I didn't imagine in my life that I would ever be considered a guitar player first of all because I started off as a singer.

I listen to other guitar players, yeah. It gives me new concepts and shows me where the instrument is going for the future and it is going some places. There are some musicians who are really putting out a good vibe with new theories. I try and keep up.

If you play music for the right reasons, the rest of the things will come. The right reason to play music is that you love it. That's why I play music. I never imagined that I was going to be doing this, especially because I never thought of myself as an instrumentalist.

Life isn't all me. I have a family to support. I can't rob them of a good life simply because I want to play something.

The greatest guitar player in the world today for me is Paco de Lucia, who is actually Spanish.

My whole life, I've never worried about being No. 1, because that's the guy they've got to get out of there.

One thing all the way through the show to me is boring. I don't care how great the artist is. I find that if my audience is very young, and they want to hear very young songs, my show will be dominated by that. But there'll be some ballads here and there and some swing tunes.

'I Want To Hold Your Hand' is a great classic by Paul McCartney and John Lennon, I sure love that song. I did like the classic version, a rock-oriented song, then someone heard me do it with the Grant Green approach - Grant Green and Larry Young did it, with a bossa nova beat on the funky side.

We don't live in a jazz world, unfortunately. I think if I had lived in a jazz world, I would have done OK. I'm not sure I would have done great. I'm a lover of jazz music, so I would have been happy, don't get me wrong. I go to jazz concerts like the biggest jazz fan in world. The drag is that I don't play jazz for a living.

My stepfather had an electric guitar. He went to his pawn store one day to get a guitar and an amp, and I couldn't understand what I was hearing. All afternoon, I just sat against the amp and let it reverberate through me. Something must have stuck.

Love songs are one of the great essences of life, the only thing thats lasting.

As my career has progressed, I've had the pleasure of playing with the baddest jazz cats on the planet. But that doesn't change my desire to entertain folks. That's really who I am.

I have been doing music all my life so everyday when I get up I expect music will be part of it.

My biggest song in the world is 'Nothing's Gonna Change My Love for You.' All over the world, it's number one on the whole planet.

I've always hated rejection; I only want to go out there when I know I've got it right.

My stepfather met my mother when I was seven years old, and he was a guitar player. So he caught me messing with his guitar, his electric guitar, and he tried to show me some chords, but my hands were too small.

The jazz rhythm won't be understood by the bulk of my audience. That's the problem. We can get away with maybe one tune a night. It depends on where we place it. A song like 'Beyond the Sea,' the fans love that. It's fresh.

Andres Segovia, the great name for guitar, he put classical guitar on the map. He was the proponent of it, the best in the world. So I was listening to a record that he had made, and a little bauble happened in the middle of the record. A finger slipped, and I said, 'Wait a minute. He's not allowed to make mistakes,' - my mind.

I haven't done anything with Chick Corea. He had a group called Return to Forever, and everyone in the group became a superstar. I would really like to work with him.

I keep my ears open. The world can change overnight; that's what happens in this world. You never know. You have to keep your eyes and ears open. If you can't keep up, you ain't gonna catch up. I've been making records since 1953, and you just have to keep up.

I like to sing because my mother was a singer. She sang to me all the time, so I learned to love singing. I did have a career as little 10-year-old George Benson. I made my first record as a vocalist, but I've been playing guitar since I was 9.

One of the first things electric I ever saw was a guitar. I was living in a house with no electricity until, at 7, we moved to a house that had it. It had electric lights, but the previous owners had even taken the light bulbs with them when they moved.

I think I'm more entertainer than musician. I like to get with the crowd, make this night special for them.

I actually got discovered in my hometown of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania by a man who worked at a place that sold barbecue sandwiches!

I don't particularly fall in love with my own compositions, but some of them are decent.

When I was 15 years old, my cousin and I formed a singing group called The Altaires. And, because we became the most popular singing group in the Tri-State area, the rest of the group convinced me I should play the guitar - even though I didn't own one! So what happened was, my stepfather actually made my first electric guitar for me for $23!

The outlook for Georgia, I'm pleased to say, is good.

We're projecting roughly a three percent growth this year and that could get even higher as we go forward.

I study the Bible constantly. I teach the Bible. You know, I'm a Bible conductor, and I have a lot of people studies. But also, I see how small things really help people to get over humps in their life. Gives them direction.

We are trying to schedule music every other Saturday night from 7 to 10 p.m. We like to feature local talent.

Don't forget the late '70s was dominated by people like the Queen of Disco Donna Summer and everybody who was in that bag. We were already in dance mode, the Bee Gees were out with the most fantastic record the world had ever heard, so the world was in the mode. Anything outside of that mode was secondary.

R&B music became gigantic with people like Marvin Gaye and Barry White and Curtis Mayfield who became superstars. We tried to find a place where Jazz belonged because we didn't sell records.

I've done two albums for Concord Records; one was with Al Jarreau and it did very well for us. The second album was called 'Songs And Stories,' and it had good songs and good performances, but I promised them I would do an album that was more jazz-oriented.

I like Simon Cowell - look at how many great artists have come out of the U.K. because of him.

I moved to Hawaii from Inglewood, New Jersey. I had planned on retiring there.

I have not heard a whole lot of the rock genre. I tell you what knocked me out though. I was in Holland and I went to a Robbie Williams concert. There were 50,000 people there. That was an eye-opener.

I never gave up on that idea, you know, that jazz musicians have the same opportunity as everybody else and that it's what you put on that record that makes the difference whether you sell it or not or are able to get it into people's households.

There is no finer guitarist than Kenny Burrell

I've had the pleasure of playing with the baddest Jazz cats on the planet.

People who love jazz musicians love us when we play what we want to play and we're starving. But as soon as you commercialize your sound like Wes Montgomery did, the jazz fans and the critics are down on you!

I like Simon Cowell - look at how many great artists have come out of the U.K. because of him.

Guitar gigs were everywhere in the '50s, and I started diddling around so I could keep working. Playing honky-tonk, simple stuff. I took a few gigs with an organ band that put me out front.

No matter what they take from me, they can't take away my dignity.

The first time I tried to sing along with my guitar, everybody in the studio booed. They all said it wouldn't work.

Lenny Breau dazzled me with his extraordinary guitar playing... I wish the world had the opportunity to experience his artistry.

The less one remembers about the day before, the more the new day will be unfettered by triviality.

You might not feel like playing pretty all the time. Instead, you might want to play something nasty....you might want to play something out of context with the tune. It might be a note that creates so much tension it becomes unpleasant, but you want it to sound that way.

The greatest teacher is just going out and playing.

I spent a lot of time teaching myself theory and harmony so I could be free to express myself on the instrument.

Never give up on a good thing, never give up, never give up!

Of course we've lost so many superstars who've made jazz what it is. We've lost so many musicians who created new things and changed the way we think about music and who took jazz to a new level. So jazz is suffering from that. But we still have a lot of incredible people playing jazz in the world. We have a lot of people leading the way.

The melody is the most important thing that must stay in the minds of the people who listen to you. No matter how many notes you play, you can't let them forget what the song is.

Larry Carlton is an incredibly versatile guitarist who has been a major force for guitar for many years. He is easily recognizable - all you have to do is hear him once and from that point on you'll be a fan, just like me. It gives me great pleasure to extend congratulations to Larry on his 2011 George Benson Lifetime Achievement Award. Congratulations !

Columbus is taking off and it's about to boom, this is a hot town right now.

The jazz always seems to automatically come out, because it was from my jazz days that I learned that spark. And the nice thing with my band and this repertoire, which is a complete joy, is that we go beyond just playing chords and melody. It is music that can stretch out.