Mar 2, 2026 9:58 PM
In Memoriam: John Hammond Jr., 1942–2026
John P. Hammond (aka John Hammond Jr.), a blues guitarist and singer who was one of the first white American…
George Benson’s latest album was recorded live at Ronnie Scott’s in London.
(Photo: Carl Hyde)As an 8-year-old busker, George Benson boasted a big voice and a broken-down ukulele that he wielded with prodigious skill. By all accounts, his act was something of a spectacle on the streets of postwar Pittsburgh.
So, it was no surprise that when word of the child prodigy reached singer Eddie Jefferson—like Benson, a Pittsburgh native—the pioneer of jazz vocalese was compelled to go see the kid. Jefferson was both impressed and amused. “He and a friend both fell on the ground laughing when they heard me singing one of his songs,” Benson recalled during a September phone call with DownBeat.
Despite his current status as a global superstar, Benson, 77, has never forgotten those early days. On a July night in 2019 at Ronnie Scott’s in London, he performed the tune that made Jefferson famous—“Moody’s Mood For Love”—deftly massaging the words crafted for saxophonist James Moody’s solo. The interpretation, documented on Benson’s latest album, Weekend In London (Provogue), is at once a tribute to his own gifts and an homage to his predecessor’s.
“Eddie Jefferson was gigantic to me because he was an innovator,” Benson said.
The guitarist’s own status as a jazz innovator has sometimes been obscured by his success in generating pop hits, some of which—notably “Give Me The Night,” the title track from a 1980 album produced by Quincy Jones—appear in live versions on Weekend In London. But the many honors he has garnered—among them a 2009 NEA Jazz Masters fellowship, 10 Grammy awards and his induction, via the 2020 Readers Poll, into the DownBeat Hall of Fame—attest to his standing as a creative force.
So, too, does the praise of a multigenerational cohort of colleagues. John Scofield, 68, said he was first dazzled by Benson on hearing his second and third albums, It’s Uptown (1966) and The George Benson Cookbook (1967). Produced by John Hammond for Columbia Records, the recordings showcase Benson’s fleet fingers in the familiar setting of an organ combo. Scofield said he was so taken by the albums that as a freshman at Berklee in 1970, he made sure to catch Benson’s gig at the Boston club The Jazz Workshop.
“It blew my mind,” he recalled. “I’ve been a fan ever since.”
Laughingly admitting to stealing licks from Benson, Scofield said it was the fluidity of his articulation that was most impressive: “He has this technical thing he can do on the guitar where he plays something nobody else can play. There are only a couple of guys like that in the history of jazz guitar. Django Reinhardt and Wes Montgomery come to mind—and George.
Hammond came to the blues through the folk boom of the late 1950s and early 1960s, which he experienced firsthand in New York’s Greenwich Village.
Mar 2, 2026 9:58 PM
John P. Hammond (aka John Hammond Jr.), a blues guitarist and singer who was one of the first white American…
Lettuce, from left: Eric Coomes, Adam Deitch, Ryan Zoidis, Eric Bloom, Adam Smirnoff and Nigel Hall
Feb 17, 2026 11:05 AM
They were Berklee misfits. Neither jazzy enough for the straightahead crowd at Boston’s highly prestigious College of…
Lovers of the big band experience, clockwise from top left, John Clayton, Leigh Pilzer, Ted Nash, David Pietro and Christine Jensen.
Feb 10, 2026 11:00 AM
The popularity of big band music might have peaked in the 1930s and ’40s, but despite the many changes on the jazz…
New Orleans Trad Jazz Camp
Feb 19, 2026 10:39 AM
Jazz camps have exploded around the globe as a summertime tradition for working on your chops and making new friends.…
Sullivan Fortner continues a winning streak with his third Grammy for Jazz Album of the Year after earning the Gilmore Larry J. Bell Artist Award last October.
Feb 10, 2026 10:48 AM
The 68th Annual Grammy Awards presented a marathon of winners, tributes and music on Feb. 1. Kendrick Lamar added five…
