George Benson prepares for a dive into six-decade career in Birmingham show

“I don’t have a plan,” shrugs the US jazz legend. “I walk out on that stage, I feel the audience, and that tells me what I should be playing. We depend on them to feed us their thoughts, in their applause, their screams or their comments while we’re playing. And if we get the response I’m looking for, then we go up from there.”

Rest assured, even with a performer this thrillingly impulsive, there are certain calling-cards that Benson is sure to deliver during his flying visit to the Midlands. Expect the butterscotch vocals and liquid guitar touch that have made the 77-year-old one of the most fabled bandleaders in modern jazz. Prepare for a deep dive into a six-decade, Grammy-winning career that spans from last year’s acclaimed covers album, Walking to New Orleans, all the way back to his distant youth in the hard-bitten jazz clubs of his native Pennsylvania. And count on the fearless improvisation that reimagines your favourite songs – from Give Me the Night to The Greatest Love of All – before your eyes. “That keeps the night fresh,” he says, “and the audience alive.”

If Benson’s shows are unpredictable, then his backstory is more so, the veteran’s childhood in the ghetto of postwar Pittsburgh far removed from the A-list realm that is now his natural habitat. “I saw everything,” he remembers of those tough formative years. “It sounds ridiculous now, but I figured it was just a part of life, being shot at. I was hit in the head with a bullet when I was fourteen years old. So just the fact I’m here today is unbelievable to me.”

Mercifully, amongst the violence and hardship, there was always music. Although Benson was first billed as Little Georgie – singing for dollars on street corners – he was soon slinging guitar and making his mark at the state’s jazz and R&B clubs. “I started going to jam sessions, which I was unwelcome at, because I was known as a singer, not a player. So when I started playing guitar, the women would start screaming, ‘Sing something, Georgie!’ The jazz musicians hated that. They wanted to be like Max Roach and Charlie Parker.”

Benson wouldn’t slum it for long. He recorded his first material for RCA at the age of ten, and barely into his twenties, became a bandleader of renown with 1964’s solo debut The New Boss Guitar. Even the notoriously hot-tempered jazz giant Miles Davis was an admirer, drafting Benson for the track Paraphernalia, from 1968’s Miles in the Sky. “Since Miles didn’t owe anybody anything, he wasn’t afraid of anybody,” remembers Benson. “He’d speak his mind. He’d tell it like he saw. Sometimes the truth hurt. Miles didn’t mind telling me the truth, and sometimes, it hurt.”

Benson was about to make his own mark. By the age of 26, he reflects, he was already the leading instrumentalist on the US jazz scene, but in 1976, the guitarist’s profile was elevated by his first notable vocal performance on This Masquerade – the Grammy-winning standout from the Billboard-topping Breezin’ album. “The producer, Tommy LiPuma, was convinced Breezin’ was viable as an instrumental record, and did not need a vocal. But he allowed me one chance to sing This Masquerade. We sold millions around the world – something nobody imagined, except the people who heard me sing back in the nightclubs as Little Georgie, and told me, ‘You don’t know how big you’re gonna be – but you’re gonna be gigantic’.”

That prediction was right on the money. In 1980, the crossover US #4 disco hit Give Me the Night brought the jazzman to a whole new audience. “That song hit the dance world, and that’s where the young people are.” Since then, Benson has ridden the momentum into a triumphant late career, most recently working with Damon Albarn’s Gorillaz on 2018’s Humility single and reinterpreting the songbook of the American rock ‘n’ roll pioneers on Walking to New Orleans. “I worked with some of Nashville’s finest musicians,” he remembers. “And I had no idea that I would ever get to record the songs by Chuck Berry and Fats Domino, that I knew coming up.”

Throughout, Benson has overseen the Ibanez GB signature guitars that he’ll bring to the Symphony Hall. “That’s what I’ve been using onstage since Weekend in L.A. back in 1978,” he reflects. “I’ve designed two amps with Fender. There’s no lag, so I can play fast lines and every note is gonna be heard. But I never use pedals – they take up too much of my thinking. I’d rather be thinking about the improvisation, and that takes up a lot of space.”

After all, he reminds us, the thrill of a Benson show doesn’t come from the decibels, but the dynamic between the best live players in modern jazz. “I’m confident,” says Benson of the high-wire improvisation masterclass he has planned for Symphony Hall, “because I’m bringing the right musicians along. They can do wonderful things.” We know, pretty much, what people come to hear. Don’t get me wrong, We know we’re gonna give them the hits. But we’ll use the arrangements to let them know which song it is – then we’ll go off into improvisation. I don’t know what’s going to happen.” It’s all good, as long as people get the point. The main thing is communicating with the music. It’s not a technical contest. I like music that has a message.”

And when he finally takes a bow, says Benson, he’ll know how the night has gone down by the look on the audience’s faces. “I want them to feel that it was worth them coming out for the night. That even though they knew pretty much what they were gonna get, there were lots of things we did that came across fresh to them. Because that’s what’s so great about live jazz. There are no two nights alike…”

George Benson is currently scheduled to play Symphony Hall Birmingham on June 29, though dates could change depending on coronavirus restrictions. For more information visit: https://www.thsh.co.uk/event/george-benson-in-concert