George Benson - The Art of Jazz Guitar (DVD, 2006)

What's not to like? George Benson is a national treasure! FEW real jazz players have stayed well in the vein of true jazz and have had some "crossover" success in the world of popular, commercial, musical reality. This is NOT a thing to be spurned or belittled. If you play some Jazz/stoned fusion and find that 3/4 of the U.S. is not in your market what do you gain? Your discordance and lack of identifiable beat may make the beatniks of late 40s or early - mid 50s swoon at your "vision" and cause the rest of the musical world to loose lunch. Anyway in this DVD Benson takes you through some progressions, shows off some chord work most of us will never embrace, but it gives you a technical level to aspire to. It shows what you can do when you live, sleep, breath, eat, and dream being a guitar player. Mr. Benson gives a little personal history and blends it with the lesson. The lesson on dual note (octave) runs tells not only who he got it from but how he does it and what the problens are further into the run. Fretboard navigation is labeled as what it is; scales. There's no nonsense here, some sincere touching on reality here. While Sir George sits amid spaceous, very nice surroundings he points out a possibly less appreciated absolute: that if you don't enjoy some semblance of commercial success you may staunchly hold your head high for your own vision and hock your axe for food. This means the masses will never know you had a vision or possibly that you ever existed. Hooray for you but, personally, I'm very glad we've got the genius of George Benson here, now. You'll see how blistering fast he is - all the while learning and being entertained on a very personable one on one level. I'm a blues player personally and LOVED seeimg how much I didn't know. By the by, there's no such thing as knowing too much. Whadaya have to loose? This is a great players DVD but given so much tutoring it may be a bit heavy for non-players.I loved it.