– Press Release

Eagle Rock Entertainment will release George Benson: Live at Montreux 1986, a performance on DVD from one of the true greats of jazz guitar at Europe’s most prestigious music festival.

Contemporary jazz and smooth r&b have never seen a figure as successful and versatile as George Benson. This show not only demonstrates his utter mastery of Wes Montgomery-style guitar playing, but also showcases the strong, flexible singing that ultimately exposed him to a mass audience. Here, he sings such monster hits as “Turn Your Love Around,” his concert show-stopper “On Broadway,” and often scat-sings while soloing, his trademark crowd-pleasing trick. Additionally, he takes on “The Greatest Love of All,” a song best known via Whitney Houston’s version, but that aficionados consider to be effectively owned by Benson.

Although he has said that he wanted to be considered a singer more than anything else, Philadelphian Benson was first known as a prodigy on the guitar, joining Brother Jack McDuff’s Organ Trio in 1962 at the age of 19. By 1965, he formed his own band, and quickly became recognized as Wes Montgomery’s heir to the jazz guitar throne, sitting in on Miles Davis’ Miles in the Sky. For the next ten years, he recorded countless records as a leader and accompanist, and was one of the jazz world’s biggest draws.

Then he released Breezin’ in 1976, which, while still focused on his guitar playing, included his hit rendition of Leon Russell’s “This Masquerade.” From that point on, Benson became known to millions as the original smooth r&b vocalist, cutting enormous hit albums such as the Quincy Jones-produced Give Me The Night. Since then, he’s maintained a dual career as a balladeer par excellence and one of the great living jazz guitarists.

Since 2003, Eagle Rock Entertainment has offered music fans and collectors high quality audio/visual productions of exclusive performances from the prestigious Montreux Jazz Festival in Switzerland, now in its 39th year. Eagle Rock releases both recent and historic performances from the Festival through an exclusive agreement with Montreux Sounds, and many new performances are filmed in High Definition and recorded in stereo, 5.1 surround and DTS audio.