Saturday, February 20, 2021

Benson & No Hedges

 
We'll populate the weekend with back-to-back Black History blasts, beginning with this anniversary remaster I've been rassling with for the last few days.

This one circulated for years as an incomplete set, until a master reel surfaced with the whole broadcast.

I worked on it some, struggling to break the guitars more forward until the Sound Forge 11 Parametric EQ tool came riding in to the rescue.

I took some of the dead air out and denoised a lot of the FM static away too.

Which means now you can really hear George Benson and Earl Klugh tear the roof off the Jazz Workshop, using only their instruments.

This is pre-superstardom GB, when he was still a Jazz artist and one of the flagship acts on Creed Taylor's utterly orgasmic CTI imprint.

That this firestorm hour of torrential guitarissimo isn't officially released says the usual things about the "music industry".


George Benson Quartet
Jazz Workshop
Boston, Massachusetts USA
2.20.1973

01 WBCN-FM intro
02 Straight Life
03 The Gentle Rain
04 Ode to a Kudu
05 Cafe Reggio
06 What Are You Doing the Rest of Your Life?
07 Marvin Gaye medley: Save the Children/What's Going On/Mercy, Mercy Me
08 Sugar
09 Superwoman
10 Straight, No Chaser
11 WBCN-FM outro

Total time: 1:01:17

George Benson - guitar & vocals
Earl Klugh - guitar
Roland Wilson - bass
Larry McCloskey - drums

master off-air WBCN-FM reel
cleaned by mhg, October 2020, and remastered by EN, February 2021
353 MB FLAC/February 2021 archive link


I'll be Black in 24 once again with another ridiculously tasteful BHM thing. But we wish a very happy 48th birthday to this generous slice of WBCN Jazz history. Bon appetit!--J.