Artist: George Benson

George Benson is an American guitarist, singer, and songwriter. He began his professional career at the age of 19 as a jazz guitarist. 

A former child prodigy, Benson first came to prominence in the 1960s, playing soul jazz with Jack McDuff and others. He then launched a successful solo career, alternating between jazz, pop, R&B singing, and scat singing. His album Breezin' was certified triple-platinum, hitting no. 1 on the Billboard album chart in 1976. Benson has won ten Grammy Awards. 

His 1974 release, Bad Benson, climbed to the top spot in the Billboard jazz chart, while the follow-ups, Good King Bad (#51 Pop album) and Benson & Farrell (with Joe Farrell), both reached the jazz top-three sellers.

By the mid-to-late 1970s, as he recorded for Warner Bros. Records, a whole new audience began to discover Benson. On 1976's Breezin', Benson sang a lead vocal on the track "This Masquerade", first recorded by The Carpenters. Benson's version (notable also for the lush, romantic piano intro and solo by Jorge Dalto), became a huge pop hit and won a Grammy Award for Record of the Year. 

He also recorded the original version of "The Greatest Love of All" for the 1977 Muhammad Ali bio-pic, The Greatest, which was later covered by Whitney Houston as "Greatest Love of All." The live take of "On Broadway," recorded a few months later from the 1978 release Weekend in L.A., also won a Grammy. 

He worked with Freddie Hubbard on several of his albums throughout the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s. The Qwest record label (a subsidiary of Warner Bros., run by Quincy Jones) released Benson's breakthrough pop album Give Me The Night, produced by Jones.  Benson made it into the pop and R&B top ten with the song "Give Me the Night" (written by former  Heatwave keyboardist Rod Temperton).