Artist: George Benson
Album: Dreams Do Come True: When George Benson Meets Robert Farnon
Genre: Contemporary Jazz, Crossover Jazz
Label: Rhino Records
Released: 2024
Quality: FLAC (tracks+.cue)
Tracklist:
- At Last (4:13)
- A Song for You (3:37)
- Pretend (4:00)
- A Long Time Ago (4:33)
- Love Is Blue (4:16)
- My Romance (4:07)
- Autumn Leaves (4:20)
- Can't We Be Friends (3:01)
- My Prayer (4:36)
- Yesterday (4:18)
- One Goodbye (3:02)
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Guitarist and singer George Benson gives a long-lost album new life on 2024's soulfully urbane Dreams Do Come True: When George Benson Meets Robert Farnon. Initially recorded in 1989, these sessions were captured during a busy, transitional period for Benson, arriving amidst his massive wave of chart success in the '70s and early '80s, periods that found him moving between more groove-based funk and synthy, quiet-storm balladry. Recorded with legendary film and mood music composer/producer Robert Farnon, the set finds Benson returning to the jazz, standards, and traditional pop approach of his early career. For whatever reason, Benson delayed releasing (and ultimately lost) the album, perhaps choosing instead to showcase 1989's similarly oriented Tenderly, which found him working with arranger Marty Paich and jazz luminaries McCoy Tyner and Ron Carter. In many ways, Dreams Do Come True feels like a companion album to it, showcasing a handful of American Popular Songbook classics alongside newer pop hits like Lennon and McCartney's "Yesterday" and Leon Russell's "A Song for You." In revisiting Dreams Do Come True, Benson worked with composer/arranger Randy Waldman to add overdubs and some choral arrangements as finishing touches on the original recordings. The result is an album of lushly performed jazz and traditional pop with Benson's bright croon framed by warm orchestral strings, piano, and harp. Cuts like "Pretend," "My Romance," and "Autumn Leaves" nicely underscore his longstanding love for Nat King Cole. Similarly, by focusing on jazz standards he's able to spotlight just how harmonically rich and swinging his jazz phrasing is. If it had been released in 1989, it would have prefigured the rise in popularity of similar standards albums by Natalie Cole, Rod Stewart, Tony Bennett, and others. Even arriving decades after it was recorded, Dreams Do Come True perfectly blends Benson's contemporary style with a timeless jazz and pop charm.