Warner Bros. 2919
Producer: Tommy LiPuma
Track listing: Breezin’ / This Masquerade / Six to Four / Affirmation / So This Is Love? / Lady / Down Here on the Ground / Shark Bite / This Masquerade
July 31, 1976
2 weeks
On Breezin’ producer Tommy LiPuma helped George Benson rediscover his voice. Benson’s jazz/R&B guitar stylings had won him widespread acclaim, including a Grammy nomination for his 1973 album White Rabbit and recording contracts from Columbia and Creed Taylor’s CTI label. Yet his voice was usually absent from his recordings. That changed, however, when Warner Bros. signed him in 1976 and Benson went to work with Warner Bros. staff producer LiPuma on Breezin’.
“When I met Tommy he said, ‘George, I heard you sing five years ago in San Francisco and never could understand why no one had exploited your voice,'” says Benson. “He brought this one song to me called ‘This Masquerade’ and he said, ‘George, you can tear this up.'” Yet Benson had his doubts. “I thought it was a nice song. I liked Leon Russell’s version of it, but I didn’t think I could improve on it, so I was kind of reluctant to commit myself to it. What convinced me to do the song is that when I played it for a couple of guys in the band, their wives said, ‘Wow, that’s my favorite song.'”
The song marked a return to the microphone for Benson, who had started his career in the ’50s singing and playing guitar. By the late ’60s, however, disc jockeys were telling him they would not play his vocals. “But I didn’t let that bother me, because I knew basically people accepted me as a guitar player,” he says.
Benson’s vocals on “This Masquerade” were compared to Stevie Wonder’s. “I knew Stevie. We were good friends and the comparison actually helped the record get airplay,” Benson says. “Stevie was one of the top vocalists in the world at the time and I was a guitar player being compared to him. How could I be unhappy?”
Even while in the studio “This Masquerade,” which went on to become a top 10 hit, garnered exceptional responses. Bobby Womack was called in to contribute a reworked version of “Breezin'” as the album’s title track, Benson recalls. “Bobby walked in while we were playing back ‘This Masquerade.’ He said, ‘Wow, who in here has a voice like that?’ He didn’t know that I sang. That was the first indication that we had something special.”
Breezin’ was recorded on January 6, 7, and 8, 1976, at Capitol Records in Hollywood. The studio was actually booked for four days, Benson recalls, so with the album complete, Benson and company hung out and partied on the fourth day. Working at Capitol made the sessions extra special for Benson. “That’s the studio that Nat [King Cole] built. For me it was a very historic moment being in the studio that so many greats had recorded in. There is so much history there.”
THE TOP FIVE
Week of July 31, 1976
1. Breezin’, George Benson
2. Frampton Comes Alive!, Peter Frampton
3. Wings at the Speed of Sound, Wings
4. Chicago X, Chicago
5, Spitfire, Jefferson Starship