Customer Reviews

Weekend in L.A.

5 star:		(9)
4 star:		(6)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Weekend In L.A. is a smooth live recording by George Benson. His version of "On Broadway" is a great combination of jazz, r&b with a dash of funk thrown in. Mr. Benson's voice has never sounded finer and the song became a top ten single. There are other great performances on the album including the smoky "Lady Blue", the breezy title cut, the heavy jazz of "Ode To A Kudu" and a touching tribute to his mentor Wes Montgomery, "We Remember Wes". There is also Mr. Benson's original version of "The Greatest Love Of All" which is from the Muhammad Ali biopic, The Greatest. The song is nothing like the overplayed, schmaltzy version that Whitney Houston had a hit with. It is an understated, pretty song that Mr. Benson doesn't go over the top with.

This particular recording exhibits a perfect compromise between George Benson pop singer and George Benson masterful guitarist. "Ode to Kudu" is absolutely spectacular in it's beauty. George plays the hell out of it. "Weekend In La" has George flexing his jazz muscles on the is pleasant tune, you even hear a quick "I Got Rhythm" quote".

"Lady Blue" is soulful, stronger for the emotion than the lyrics which are a bit trite.

"On Broadway" was a bit overplayed on the radio but is still on of the most original renditions of this song ever recorded. This song smacks of Phil Upchurch's inventive musical conceptualizations. Phil has this very unique approach on how to combine a rhythm to a piece never sacrificing the song in order to get groove. Other's could learn alot from Phil.

Overall this album has that a perfect balance between the vocal aspect and his exceptional playing ability. The instrumentals show Mr. Benson at the height of his powers. For me, a vast improvement over "Breezin'" and "In Flight"

This album is quite enjoyable. George Benson is quite an entertaining performer, and his energy shines through on most of these songs. It is important to note that he had quite a stellar band, especially his pianist, Jorge Dalto. Just listen to Dalto's jazzy embellishments on "The Greatest Love of All" and "It's All in the Game" if you don't believe me! As a pianist myself, I can appreciate what Dalto does. There is also a good mix of material, ranging from the reflective, to the funky, to the unbelievably cool. A great album! P.S: George's "The Greatest Love of All" beats Whitney's any day!

I have been a fan of George Benson for almost 3 decades. This is an excellent CD which does more to showcase his superb voice more than his great guitar playing. Among my favorites on this CD are....Lady Blue, The Greatest Love Of All, and It's All In The Game. Some of the arrangements are with a disco-beat. Hey, this was the 70's after all and Disco-Jazz was at it's peak. Overall, this is an excellent live CD!!!!

This live cd is smooth and silky. George has an all-star band with him too.

A lot of the reviews here failed to touch on the more technical, guitar playing style of Mr. Benson. Most of the songs recognized by the other reviewers centered on the album's top 40 songs like On Broadway and Greatest Love of All. However, there are several gems in this album that really showcase George Benson when he still identified himself as a jazz guitarist rather than as a pop jazz artist. I'd like to focus my review on his instrumental pieces in this album. Take note of the first song of this album Weekend in LA. Listen to how he just doesn't want to "give up" his solo playing in this song. His solo came in two parts. One was a smoother take and then the second part, he went for the kill. Brilliant. Another brilliant song on this album people should listen to is We All Remember Wes- a tribute to his idol Wes Montgomery. Here George Benson shows how he can deliver his brand of playing- smooth, fast, yet it doesn't feel like it's rushing you through the song. The solo lines are fantastic. Accompanied by a great rhythm section in this album, George Benson releases a live album that is a masterpiece. Buy this album not for the top 40 songs, but buy it because you want to hear the master play. He's still one of the best.

I bought this album in 1978 when I was a Senior in high school. I was thrilled when the set was re-released on cd. This hot live set comes from George's late jazz period before he completely moved into the pop arena, and 20 years later it still stands as a high-water mark for Geo. Benson releases.

Benson followed In Flight with this live album, recorded at The Roxy in Hollywood on the 30th of September, 1st of October and 2nd of October 1977. Everyone who played on the previous album is here on this one and it's a great collection of 11 songs, again produced by Tommy LiPuma. The standout for me, is the hit "On Broadway" with its memorable beat break served up by Harvey Mason and Ralph MacDonald.

Benson's version here of "Down Here On The Ground" is another personal favourite of mine, as is "Lady Blue", and he also does a live version of "The Greatest Love Of All", the original version of which was a huge hit for Benson in 1977, off the soundtrack to the Muhammad Ali movie The Greatest. Personally, I prefer the studio version (availble on The George Benson Collection) but as anyone who's tried it will know, it is not an easy song to sing and Benson manages to make it sound easy.

Regarding the instrumental tracks, while still firmly aimed at the pop end of the market (I guess what we would call 'smooth jazz' today), he does manage to be a bit more adventurous on the guitar, but only a little. The title track, along with others like "California P.M.", "Windsong", "Ode To A Kudu", the funky "We All Remember Wes" (I defy anyone to sit still while listening to that one) and "We As Love" are all very interesting but nothing like what he gave us on earlier albums like Beyond the Blue Horizon or Bad Benson or even on Breezin'.

Still, it was another platinum seller for Benson and it set him off on a path, on which he eventually abandoned all real jazz pretensions in order to achieve true commercial/pop success. I'm not sure he ever returned.

This was another nostalgia-driven vinyl to CD must-have for me. 4.5 stars.

...and then came the "live" album.

I am generally not a fan of live albums by any artists. However, some recordings have surpassed their stage limitations, especially in more modern recordings (ie. Pink Floyd's Pulse for example). But amongst classic rock era recordings, live usually translated into "poor". Fleetwood Mac's live album ('80) was downright muddy, Led Zeppelin's "The Song Remains The Same" was so spontaneously combustible that Plant's vocals were reduced to mainly grunts and the audience intrusion was horribly loud. There are though those live recordings that both capture the audience appreciation without it being too intrusive, the sound engineering being done well enough to really capture the talent of the artists, and the production being slick enough to make the album sound fresh and terrific. Joni Mitchell's "Miles Of Aisles" ('74), and George Benson's WEEKEND IN L.A. ('77) are the two best live recordings I can think of from this era. Both remarkably benefit from the same perfections, though for different reasons. Joni's live album benefits from new interpretations of her already classic catalog by the teaming effort of Tom Scott and The LA Express who assisted Joni stepping over the threshold of the jazz music entrance. Her resulting products have been monumental ever since then. George on the other hand has given us a highly produced and engineered live set of nearly all new material which is as good, and sometimes better, as anything he recorded in the studio.

George Benson was an extremely young superstar on jazz guitar, recording his first single with RCA Victor in New York at the tender age of 10 years old! From there, his name appears in a jazz Who's Who of some of the biggest names in the industry culminating with Miles Davis. He was also a protégé of Wes Montgomery who's influence is written all over Benson's work ever since, even easily recognizable on his 80's "pop" albums. George was one of the handful of A&M artists under the wing of Creed Taylor who Creed took over to his new label CTI.

His CTI releases were some of the best of his career, fusion jazz recordings with doses of bop: SHAPE OF THINGS TO COME ('68), TELL IT LIKE IT IS ('69), I GOT A WOMAN AND SOME BLUES ('69), THE OTHER SIDE OF ABBEY ROAD ('70), BEYOND THE BLUE HORIZON ('71), and then, WHITE RABBIT ('71). For those interested, the rest of his CTI catalogue, all wonderful albums, some more wonderful than others, is BODY TALK ('73), BAD BENSON ('74), GOOD KING BAD ('75), IN CONCERT (CARNEGIE HALL '75), and BENSON & FARRELL (with Joe Farrell, '76, his last album before signing with Warner Brothers). Warner Brothers began some serious diversifications in the mid-70's and looking to add a jazz element to their already successful jazz-rock fusion acts they lucratively courted George Benson at the end of his contract with CTI. George was already combining R&B with soul-jazz and the this was beginning the new trappings of what many call "smooth jazz", a lighter jazz with pop accessibility. Cross-over music was starting to pay off in royalties and the eyes of producer Tommy LiPuma (Barbra Streisand, The Pointer Sisters, The Crusaders, Al Jarreau, Dave Mason, Michael Franks, and even Miles Davis) fell square on George Benson as he began to set up Warner Jazz.

In 1976, under the watchful eye of LiPuma, George Benson assembled a perfect band anchored with Phil Upchurch (guitar), Stanley Banks (bass), Ronnie Foster (keyboards), Harvey Mason (drums), and Ralph McDonald (percussion). This was the core group that Benson would shepherd through three platinum award winning albums that set critics on their ears and fans on the edge of their seats. For many fans, the unparalleled albums, BREEZIN' (76), IN FLIGHT ('77), and WEEKEND IN L.A. ('77), were the penultimate George Benson albums. From the "smooth jazz" perspective, there are none better. If you add in the "pure" jazz albums THE OTHER SIDE OF ABBEY ROAD ('70), WHITE RABBIT ('71), and BAD BENSON ('74), you have a half dozen of the best jazz albums ever made by any contemporary jazz musician.

WEEKEND IN L.A. as begun in this review, is a live album, but in this era most "live" albums were comprised of the "best of" performances by artists, usually centered on the last successful album prior to the live set. This was the usual formula. However, jazz musicians were not rock musicians in style or attitude. George Benson's live album was almost entirely comprised of new material and it all sounded as fresh as a studio recording session, just with the light addition of audience encouragement and applause. Jazz audiences often afforded their musicians less noise and intrusion, laid back audiences who enjoyed being quiet and absorbing the performance and assimilating the notes. This then, is the atmosphere in which George and band recorded some of their best material and the third in a trilogy of record-setting cross-over album sales.

As discussed in my previous reviews of BREEZIN' and IN FLIGHT, George Benson was leaning across jazz into pop audience architectures and thus smooth jazz was essentially born. But it was WEEKEND IN L.A. whereby he truly fused pop and jazz into single seamless whole. Five of the eleven tracks are vocal jazz-pop treasures, two of those having become standards that later artists would reach to emulate and one of which provided a future diva with a song to set the standard for all standards in American music. Whitney Houston would record a cover of George Benson's (written by Linda Creed and Michael Masser) "The Greatest Love Of All". George sings it as a jazz standard, leaving it rough around the vocal edges, while Whitney power-vocalized it into romance balladry of R&B and turned the diamond in the rough into a DeBeers classic. The other standard is George's entirely new take on The Drifter's old rock and roll hit single "On Broadway". George not only jazzes up a golden oldie with tempo, instrumentals, and his trademark guitar-scat harmonies, he then lets the band go on cruise control and Ronnie Foster synths the melodic changing of the guard as Harvey Mason and Ralph McDonald break into a rhythmic dueling duet that would make Santana's three-man percussive unit blush. The resulting 10-minute-plus jam is one of the all-time classic live performances known to mankind, it still receives massive amounts of FM radio airplay, is a top selection on Sirius satellite radio, and though it is perhaps the best known track on the album, this often overshadows the fact that there are equal pieces on the rest of the album! Another stand-out vocal jazzification track is George's immaculate cover of another golden oldie, Tommy Edwards' "It's All In The Game". For the most part, George delivers straight vocal arrangement of the song and it is Ronnie Foster's piano work which supplants the oldie with jazz accents. As a protégé of Wes Montgomery, it's almost natural for George to cover Wes, but Lalo Schifrin's "Down Here On The Ground" from the film The Cincinnati Kid was a terrific '68 album and instrumental song by Wes, which now covered by George gets the straight-scoop vocals and a terrific audience-applause inducing piano solo. The last vocal track to discuss is Leon Russell's classic "Lady Blue" delivered by George and band in such a gorgeous and soulful rendition that it puts "The Greatest Love Of All" to shame. This is the one which should have been a hit single. I don't think George has sung a song with more heartfelt conviction than this recording, and the rhythm and instrumental leads are so subtly ambient this might become one of your favorite tracks to repeat.

Of the six instrumental tracks performed, the opening title track "Weekend In L.A." and "California PM" are both cut from the same cloth being smooth jazz instrumentals which would sit comfortably alongside the treasures from BREEZIN' and IN FLIGHT, complete with all the obligatory guitar licks, key and rhythm solos, and magical atmosphere which Benson and crew create out of thin air. Ronnie even pops up with 70's R&B synthesizer solo for some funky fun. "Windsong" is a dip back to Benson's CTI era musically and actually is a better instrumental than the title track from BREEZIN'. It is more creative, more technically proficient, and altogether better sounding and less formulaic. "Windsong" is one of my favorite straight-up neat Benson compositions and the first of four instrumentals to dominate the second half (2nd LP of the two-record set) of the CD. These second half is for jazz lovers all over the world. Including the beautiful vocal entry of "Lady Blue" the 2nd LP was always the "jazz half". "Ode To A Kudu" is written for one of two people (I have never figured out quite who), but it is either for his CTI producer Creed Taylor who also created a "soul jazz" spin off from CTI named Kudu Records, or it is for Taylor's first entrant on the Kudu label, Grover Washington Jr. Either way, this is another pure jazz entry on WEEKEND and happens to be the only previously recorded George Benson song, appearing on his '71 "Beyond The Blue Horizon" LP (CTI Records). "Ode" is a guitar and piano piece with some technical prowess which is not easily copied by most guitar players. One listen will have you in awe. Beautiful and artistic, another of Benson's best ever. The album closes with two instrumentals, Stevie Wonder's "We All Remember Wes" (appropriately enough) and Benson's most gorgeous piano-guitar duet ever, "We As Love". Both are works which will give you goose bumps, especially the latter. Benson always saves the best for last and knows how to end an album leaving the listener gulping for more. WEEKEND IN L.A. also won a Grammy Award and sold multi-platinum, and can be considered the final act in a trio of jazz phenomena. As for me, I sit on the list below and encourage everyone to taste all the flavors of George Benson. The man drips with talent which other guitarists, excepting maybe a handful, are not worthy enough to lick off his boot heels.

The Best Benson collection:
(Jazz)
* The Other Side Of Abbey Road Other Side of Abbey Road
* White Rabbit White Rabbit (CTI Records 40th Anniversary Edition)
* Bad Benson Bad Benson
* Breezin' Breezin
* In Flight In Flight (Deluxe Edition)
* Weekend In L.A. Weekend in L.A.
* Collaboration (with Earl Klugh) Collaboration
(pop)
* Give Me The Night Give Me the Night
* In Your Eyes In Your Eyes
* 20/20 20/20

This is a great cd which is a blend of his masterful guitar and emerging singing career. This was Benson's phenom band...Ralph McDonald, Phil Upchurch, Jorge Dalto,and the extraordinaire Harvey Mason This is the cd that you will hear his mastery of the guitar and bits of his vocalizing. Other live cds seem to concentrate on the vocals. This is the next best thing to being there. I was lucky enough to see this concert at the Roxy in los angeles, CA. His opening act was Gil Scott Heron...check out Gil Scott Heron's cd 1980 on Amazon..great cd. This is one of the first recorded concerts by Benson when he switched from his Gibson to the Ibanez guitar...still had that deep sound.

Pop this in your cd player and drive....you'll not regret it. NOW lets hear the Remastered cd!!!!