George Benson - Anthology (2CD) [EAC-FLAC] [RePoPo]

******************************************************************************* George Benson - Anthology (2CD) ******************************************************************************* CD1 01. Shadow Dancers [0:04:46.67] 02. Ain't That Peculiar [0:02:57.65] 03. A Foggy Day [0:02:33.35] 04. Ready And Able [0:03:33.65] 05. What's New [0:05:31.53] 06. Chattanooga Choo Choo [0:03:38.00] 07. White Rabbit [0:07:00.57] 08. Summertime (Live) [0:07:19.00] 09. Breezin' [0:05:21.03] 10. This Masquerade [0:08:04.47] 11. Shark Bite [0:06:10.08] 12. Nature Boy [0:06:00.72] 13. The Greatest Love Of All (Single Version) [0:03:36.23] 14. On Broadway (Live) (Single Version) [0:05:15.27] 15. We All Remember Wes (Live) [0:05:47.68] CD2 01. Love Ballad (Single Version) [0:04:19.37] 02. Off Broadway [0:05:26.13] 03. Moody's Mood [0:03:27.57] 04. Give Me The Night (Single Version) [0:03:42.58] 05. Turn Your Love Around [0:03:50.70] 06. Love All The Hurt Away (With Aretha Franklin) [0:04:09.10] 07. Mimosa (With Jimmy Smith) [0:05:50.32] 08. Being With You [0:03:55.58] 09. 20/20 [0:04:06.02] 10. New Day [0:04:27.60] 11. Kisses In The Moonlight (Single Version) [0:03:54.68] 12. Mt. Airy Road (With Earl Klugh) [0:07:52.07] 13. Let's Do It Again (Single Version) [0:03:42.00] 14. Tenderly [0:03:06.65] 15. Ready Now That You Are [0:05:50.05] 16. The Long And Winding Road [0:05:54.50] 17. C-Smooth [0:05:52.38] ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Album Review by Al Campbell George Benson's two-disc Anthology from Rhino ultimately manages to encapsulate Benson's career. These 32 tracks not only highlight the obligatory vocal pop hits "Turn Your Love Around," "Give Me the Night," and "On Broadway," but dish out a heavy dose of his early jazz recordings that followed in the footsteps of Wes Montgomery, and his many appearances throughout the years with Brother Jack Mcduff, Lonnie Smith, Hubert Laws, Aretha Franklin, Jimmy Smith, Earl Klugh, and the Count Basie Orchestra. If you're only accustomed to Benson's pop/jazz crossover work, check out this definitive overview. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- ON BROADWAY Song Review by Jason Elias This song proves that strongly written songs can keep coming back. Unbeknownst to a lot of the record-buying public, "On Broadway" was a song that went through many configurations. Songwriters Barry Mann and Cynthia Weil originally wrote it with a girl group in mind. The producers Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller liked it for the Drifters, and after some tweaking, it became an early-'60s Brill Building classic. Years later, George Benson, the leading jazz-pop artist, tackled it for his 1978 live album, Weekend in LA. For his version, Benson turned the song into a track that boasted his late-'70s band's unique sound. In many respects, the lyrics fit Benson to a tee, especially the line, "I can play this here guitar." That of course garnered a lot of applause. This track seemed to feed off of the crowd's energy and probably wouldn't have worked as well as a studio endeavor. Some may never be pleased, though. For some this is too close to Vegas-y, but Benson's singing desires had long been in the making. To assuage those who are worried, Benson also does some great riffing here. Keyboardist Jorge Dalto does some great synthesizer lines, especially on the fade that gave this song a sense of freshness and a special touch. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- GIVE ME THE NIGHT Song Review by Jason Elias Released in mid-1980, this polished song caught the tail end of the disco era. This is unabashed flash and glitz that producer Quincy Jones was becoming famous for. For Benson, Jones didn't stray too far from his late-'70s, early-'80s hitmaking recipe. This track is almost defiantly lush. Sonically, Jones put an echo on Benson's guitar riffs on this track and throughout "Give Me the Night." That gives this almost three-dimensional sound. Patti Austin is heard throughout doing scat vocals through the verses. Speaking of vocals, this is arguably one of Benson's most natural and non-ingratiating performances. Surprisingly, guitarist Lee Ritenour also appears on this track and it's hard to discern where all of the good riffs come from. Like many of the dance songs of the era, this too is subtly romantic and mature. Rod Temperton, the song's writer, had also done similar work for Michael Jackson's Off the Wall and Rufus and Chaka's Masterjam. Bassist Abraham Labroiel and drummer John Robinson provide the cushy rhythm here. "Give Me the Night" is one of those few songs that actually might make a listener feel better for that 4:58. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- TURN YOUR LOVE AROUND Song Review by Ed Hogan "Turn Your Love Around" was written for the purpose of adding new tracks to a greatest-hits collection by George Benson. Warner Bros. executives approached songwriter/producer Jay Graydon to write some songs for the multi-record set. With two days before the deadline, Graydon got an idea while having dinner with Steve Lukather, who came up with a verse. The bridge and other verses (and the finished record's background vocals) were contributed by Bill Champlin. A couple of days later, Graydon met Benson for the first time at Graydon's impressive home studio and found an instant kinship; both were guitar players. The spunky track featured one of the first Linn drum machines, which was programmed by Jeff Porcaro with synth bass played by his Toto bandmate David Paich. Graydon played guitar on the song. It also features one of Benson's most aggressive vocals, though it's still in his favored smooth style. "Turn Your Love Around" hit number one R&B and number five pop in early 1982. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- George Benson Biography by Richard S. Ginell George Benson is simply one of the greatest guitarists in jazz history, but he is also an amazingly versatile musician, and that frustrates to no end critics who would paint him into a narrow bop box. He can play in just about any style -- from swing to bop to R&B to pop -- with supreme taste, a beautiful rounded tone, terrific speed, a marvelous sense of logic in building solos, and, always, an unquenchable urge to swing. His inspirations may have been Charlie Christian and Wes Montgomery -- and he can do dead-on impressions of both -- but his style is completely his own. Not only can he play lead brilliantly, he is also one of the best rhythm guitarists around, supportive to soloists and a dangerous swinger, particularly in a soul-jazz format. Yet Benson can also sing in a lush soulful tenor with mannerisms similar to those of Stevie Wonder and Donny Hathaway, and it is his voice that has proved to be more marketable to the public than his guitar. Benson is the guitar-playing equivalent of Nat King Cole -- a fantastic pianist whose smooth way with a pop vocal eventually eclipsed his instrumental prowess in the marketplace -- but unlike Cole, Benson has been granted enough time after his fling with the pop charts to reaffirm his jazz guitar credentials, which he still does at his concerts. Benson actually started out professionally as a singer, performing in nightclubs at eight, recording four sides for RCA's X label in 1954, forming a rock band at 17 while using a guitar that his stepfather made for him. Exposure to records by Christian, Montgomery, and Charlie Parker got him interested in jazz, and by 1962, the teenaged Benson was playing in Brother Jack McDuff's band. After forming his own group in 1965, Benson became another of talent scout John Hammond's major discoveries, recording two highly regarded albums of soul-jazz and hard bop for Columbia and turning up on several records by others, including Miles Davis' Miles in the Sky. He switched to Verve in 1967, and, shortly after the death of Montgomery in June 1968, producer Creed Taylor began recording Benson with larger ensembles on A&M (1968-1969) and big groups and all-star combos on CTI (1971-1976). While the A&M and CTI albums certainly earned their keep and made Benson a guitar star in the jazz world, the mass market didn't catch on until he began to emphasize vocals after signing with Warner Bros. in 1976. His first album for Warner Bros., Breezin', became a Top Ten hit on the strength of its sole vocal track, "This Masquerade," and this led to a string of hit albums in an R&B-flavored pop mode, culminating with the Quincy Jones-produced Give Me the Night. As the '80s wore on, though, Benson's albums became riddled with commercial formulas and inferior material, with his guitar almost entirely relegated to the background. Perhaps aware of the futility of chasing the charts (after all, "This Masquerade" was a lucky accident), Benson reversed his field late in the '80s to record a fine album of standards, Tenderly, and another with the Basie band, his guitar now featured more prominently. His pop-flavored work also improved noticeably in the '90s. Benson retains the ability to spring surprises on his fans and critics, like his dazzlingly idiomatic TV appearance and subsequent record date with Benny Goodman in 1975 in honor of John Hammond, and his awesome command of the moment at several Playboy Jazz Festivals in the 1980s. His latter-day recordings include the 1998 effort Standing Together, 2000's Absolute Benson, 2001's All Blues, and 2004's Irreplaceable. Three songs from 2006's Givin' It Up, recorded with Al Jarreau, were nominated for Grammy Awards in separate categories. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Exact Audio Copy V0.99 prebeta 4 from 23. January 2008 EAC extraction logfile from 4. May 2009, 4:47 George Benson / Anthology (CD1) Used drive : TOSHIBA DVD/HD X807616 Adapter: 5 ID: 0 Read mode : Secure Utilize accurate stream : Yes Defeat audio cache : Yes Make use of C2 pointers : No Read offset correction : 697 Overread into Lead-In and Lead-Out : No Fill up missing offset samples with silence : Yes Delete leading and trailing silent blocks : No Null samples used in CRC calculations : Yes Used interface : Native Win32 interface for Win NT & 2000 Gap handling : Appended to previous track Used output format : User Defined Encoder Selected bitrate : 768 kBit/s Quality : High Add ID3 tag : No Command line compressor : F:Archivos de programaExact Audio CopyFLACFLAC.EXE Additional command line options : -6 -V -T "ARTIST=%a" -T "TITLE=%t" -T "ALBUM=%g" -T "DATE=%y" -T "TRACKNUMBER=%n" -T "GENRE=%m" -T "COMMENT=%e" %s -o %d Exact Audio Copy V0.99 prebeta 4 from 23. January 2008 EAC extraction logfile from 4. May 2009, 5:30 George Benson / Anthology (CD2) Used drive : TOSHIBA DVD/HD X807616 Adapter: 5 ID: 0 Read mode : Secure Utilize accurate stream : Yes Defeat audio cache : Yes Make use of C2 pointers : No Read offset correction : 697 Overread into Lead-In and Lead-Out : No Fill up missing offset samples with silence : Yes Delete leading and trailing silent blocks : No Null samples used in CRC calculations : Yes Used interface : Native Win32 interface for Win NT & 2000 Gap handling : Appended to previous track Used output format : User Defined Encoder Selected bitrate : 768 kBit/s Quality : High Add ID3 tag : No Command line compressor : F:Archivos de programaExact Audio CopyFLACFLAC.EXE Additional command line options : -6 -V -T "ARTIST=%a" -T "TITLE=%t" -T "ALBUM=%g" -T "DATE=%y" -T "TRACKNUMBER=%n" -T "GENRE=%m" -T "COMMENT=%e" %s -o %d ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- -------------------------------------------------------------------------------

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Huntzberger (2009-05-04)

thank you.
i've probably got all these tracks spread across all his cds but, it's nice to have them in one place :)

omni1966 (2011-02-21)

excellent musics. tyvm! :-)

mrod61 (2011-09-16)

Thanks brother.