All he’d known before was smooth jazz which isn’t jazz. “I brought a friend to Playboy Jazz Festival last year. Mmmmmm.”īenson has the same musical and teaching blood in him that flows through his father’s body and mind. “Marcus wrote and produced that song for Miles years ago and now he’s playing it here. That’s `Tutu’ and that’s Marcus Miller playing it,” he said, his head bobbing in sync with the recognizable Miles Davis classic. The fact he was dually tuned into the music and the questions being tossed at him became obvious when he suddenly stopped in mid-sentence. Standing along a walkway, he was still within hearing distance of the action on stage. It keeps my sanity and has the power to keep the world sane.”īenson wore a Miles Davis Live T-shirt that was obviously more than a fashion statement. It has the power to move and inspire people. As my dad said a long time ago, music is my life. It moves my soul and defines my existence quite honestly. I didn’t think I was qualified to be playing with such world-class musicians as Harold Land Jr., Wayne Henderson, Ed Pratt and Bob “Yarb” Bray, but my dad didn’t give me a choice,” Barry said. “At 11, I was placed in my dad’s jazz group because he needed a drummer. They are voices amazingly sounding like instruments, even arranging themselves on stage as if they were a jazz combo of drums, trumpet, saxophones, guitar, clarinet and harmonica to musically translate rhythm-and-blues, Beatles songs, hip-hop, urban rap and other secular sounds into jazz melodies and rhythms.īenson is the son of jazz saxophonist James Benson, co-founder of the Gow Dow Experience with saxophonist Leon Williams and the retired Palomares Middle School teacher who has enjoyed a dual career as a musician for five decades. The seven young men – brothers Roger and Warren Thomas, “Hops” Hutton, Garfield Buckley, Rod Eldridge, Jamal Reed and Dwight Stewart – are not voices singing without music. He recently rode on the crest of screaming applause as 20,000 fans joyfully erupted after hearing the distinctively different sounds of Naturally 7, the hands-down favorite at the 32nd annual Playboy Jazz Festival.īenson, the founder/chief executive officer of Stratus Digital and the man who has been handling Naturally 7’s online marketing on an international scale, just smiled quietly and confidently when every conversation in the Hollywood Bowl revolved around the ensemble that is much more than an a cappella group. Barry Benson, 45, wasn’t initially given a choice about whether he listened to or played jazz.
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