George Benson once was asked where he would go and what he would do if he had a time machine.
"To the 1940s, where I could try to catch up with Art Tatum," Benson replied.
It was just a whimsical idea, but next weekend Benson will get a chance to catch up to Tatum, in a sense, when he headlines the upcoming Art Tatum Jazz Heritage Festival.
Benson, the Pittsburgh-born jazz guitarist and eight-time Grammy Award winner will have the spotlight on Sunday night, the second of two nights in Toledo's premier jazz festival named for Toledo-born Tatum, widely hailed as one of the greatest jazz artists of all time. Tatum was born in Toledo in 1909 and died in Los Angeles at age 47.
Among the other nationally known artists on the slate are piano legend Ellis Marsalis, organist Jimmy McGriff, Latino band Los Hombres Calientes, jazz-funk band Phat Phunktion, gospel trio the Rance Allen Group, and Toledo jazz vocal giant Jon Hendricks.
Marsalis told The Blade last week that Tatum's piano skills were so imposing that early in his career he felt uncomfortable playing solo piano.
"Art had no equals, and I never tired to emulate him because, first of all, I don't have the discipline to sit at the piano for that many hours and become as proficient as that. For a long time, I couldn't really play solo piano because I was really too intimidated by the bar that he had set," Marsalis said.
Benson, 62, is one of the few jazz artists who has been successful as both an instrumentalist and a singer.
While his breakthrough came in 1976 with his multi-platinum-selling album, "Breezin' " - the first jazz album to sell more than a million copies - Benson already had earned a reputation among jazz aficionados as a lightning-quick guitarist as well as silky smooth vocalist.
"As a kid, I sang, danced, and played the ukulele in a nightclub," Benson recalled. "As my career has progressed, I've had the pleasure of playing with the baddest jazz cats on the planet. But that doesn't change my desire to entertain folks. That's really who I am."
He made his recording debut at age 10 as an R&B singer for a small Pittsburgh label, and moved to New York City at age 20 to work as a singer. When a vocal group was in need of a guitarist, Benson switched his focus and began working with organists Brother Jack McDuff and Jimmy Smith.
During his tenure with McDuff in the early 1960s, Benson enjoyed playing jazz that was danceable. While he appreciated and was inspired by the complex chord changes and agility of bebop jazz, he said he preferred playing music that got people up on the dance floor.
In the early 1970s, Benson became a studio guitar sensation, working with such jazz greats as Miles Davis, Stanley Turrentine, Dexter Gordon, and Freddie Hubbard, as well as sessions with vocal superstars Frank Sinatra and Tony Bennett.
The combination of Benson's swing and bebop influences, plus a rare ability to sing and play guitar, set the stage for his eventual breakthrough as a crossover artist starring in both the jazz and pop genres.
His guitar and vocal skills produced such radio-friendly gems as "This Masquerade," "On Broadway," "Give Me the Night," and "Breezin'."
Ellis Marsalis, 70, who performs Saturday night, is the patriarch of the famous New Orleans jazz family that includes Wynton, Branford, Delfeayo, and Jason.
A graduate of Dillard University who served in the U.S. Marine Corps, Marsalis was a founding member of the American Jazz Quintet with clarinetist Alvin Batiste, saxophonist Harold Battiste, and drummer Edward Blackwell.
He also worked with trumpeter Al Hirt, led the house band at the New Orleans Playboy Club, and moonlighted while in college with R&B stars Big Joe Turner and Big Maybelle.
Playing different musical styles helped him develop his jazz skills, Marsalis said.
"Everything helps, it all helps, because all of the popular idiom in those days were from the essential groove, and that groove was a strong influence in terms of playing jazz," he said.
While he was constantly playing gigs and recording, he didn't gain national stature until the 1980s.
"I didn't leave New Orleans," Marsalis said, "and in the earlier years you pretty much had to be in New York [to become nationally known]."
Marsalis also is renowned as a jazz instructor, having worked with high school students at the New Orleans Center for Creative Arts magnet school.
Among the students he taught who went on to stardom were Harry Connick, Jr., and jazz players Nicholas Payton, Terence Blanchard, and Donald Harrison.
"Ellis Marsalis was unquestionably the greatest teacher I ever had," Connick told The Blade in a 2002 interview. "He has an immense amount of knowledge, and in addition to that fact, he could back up whatever he said on piano. Being a piano player and studying under him was intimidating at times."
"It does give me a certain amount of satisfaction because that's what our job was," Marsalis said. "Harry is extremely gifted, anyway. Harry is sort of like Walter Payton was as a running back. He was on the saddest team in life and yet he was able to be better than anybody else."
It was after his sons Wynton and Branford became worldwide jazz stars in the 1980s that Ellis Marsalis began to get recognition outside of New Orleans.
Wynton once said that while he was a young teenager, his father encouraged him to work as often as possible. "Get out there and play," he'd tell his sons. "You have to get out there and play."
He said it wasn't clear when Wynton and Branford were youngsters that they would eventually become major figures in the music world.
"Those things started to blossom when they got into the high school where I was teaching. Wynton didn't get serious until he was around 12 or 13, and then when he came into the New Orleans Center for Creative Arts, it was a situation where everything was laid out for him. He was able to play all the trumpet literature and was able to perform in high school with the New Orleans Philharmonic."
The elder Marsalis rarely had a chance to perform with his sons because Wynton moved to New York City right out of high school, Branford went to Louisiana State University and then New York, and Delfeayo moved to Boston to study at the Berklee College of Music.
"I virtually never played with them because they were gone," he said.
The son with whom he has performed the most is Jason, now 28, who plays drums with the Ellis Marsalis Quartet. That group recently released "An Evening with the Ellis Marsalis Quartet," on ELM Records, recorded live last year at New Orleans' Snug Harbor jazz club.
The same lineup will be in concert in Toledok, Marsalis, with Jason on drums, Derek Douget on saxophone and longtime collaborator Bill Huntingon on bass. "I've known bill since before it was legal for us to have a cup of coffee together," Marsalis said with a laugh.
Los Hombres Calientes, a Grammy-nominated group that performs Saturday night, features trumpeter and keyboardist Irvin Mayfield and percussionist Bill Summers performing a brisk musical style that brings together elements of African, Cuban, and New Orleans jazz.
McGriff, a 69-year-old jazz and blues organist from Philadelphia, studied at the Juilliard School of Music in New York and scored his first hit with an instrumental version of Ray Charles' "I Got a Woman" in 1962, which reached No. 5 on the R&B chart and No. 20 on the pop charts.
The Rance Allen Group is a gospel trio led by the Rev. Rance Allen, pastor of New Bethel Church of God in Christ, who has been nominated three times for a Grammy Award and received a BMI Trailblazer of Gospel Music Award in January. Joining him in the trio are his brothers, Thomas and Steve.
Jon Hendricks will lead his own group in concert Saturday and then return on Sunday as a guest artist with the Toledo Jazz Orchestra. Hendricks, the 83-year-old inventor of the intricate singing style known as vocalese, has won five Grammy Awards, received the French Legion of Honor last year, and is a distinguished professor of jazz at the University of Toledo.
Phat Phunktion is a nine-piece band founded by music students at the University of Wisconsin. The group plays a form of jazz that embodies funk, soul, and pop, and has shared the stage with such groups as the Temptations, Tower of Power, War, and the Average White Band.
The Art Tatum Jazz Heritage Festival starts in International Park downtown at 1:30 p.m. Saturday and winds up with Los Hombres Calientes' 10:30 performance. On Sunday, the music starts at 2 p.m. and ends with Jimmy McGriff's 9 p.m. show. Tickets are $15 a day or $25 for both days, available from the Toledo Jazz Society, 419-241-5299, or at the gate.
Contact David Yonke at: dyonke@theblade.com or 419-724-6154.
First Published June 12, 2005, 3:59 p.m.
