Purchase includes LP jacket signed by George Benson.
George Benson gets back to Americana basics on ‘Walking To New Orleans’, out April 26th via Provogue Records. This new release is the jazz guitar legend’s double-barreled tribute to both the piano-pounding crescent city hit machine Fats Domino, and the original rock guitar hero and poet, Chuck Berry. “I’m a great appreciator of the music made by both of those guys,” says Benson. “They were fantastic. Chuck Berry was a great showman and a great musician, and Fats Domino wrote nothing but hit after hit after hit.”xxx‘Walking To New Orleans’ is Benson’s 45th album, and his first recording since 2013’s ‘Inspiration: A Tribute to Nat King Cole’, but it couldn’t be more different. Where Benson previously embellished Cole’s cool tunes with lush orchestral arrangements, ‘Walking To New Orleans’ toggles between tracks written and or recorded by Berry and Domino as though Benson were moderating a musical conversation between Missouri and Louisiana. The Chuck Berry songbook is represented by the good-timey “You Can’t Catch Me,” the sinuous “Havana Moon,” the rollicking “Memphis, Tennessee,” and the bluesy “How You’ve Changed.” Fats Domino weighs in with the boisterous “I Hear You Knocking,” “Blue Monday,” and the album’s iconic title track, “Walking To New Orleans.”
Produced by Kevin “The Caveman” Shirley, whose extensive credits include Journey, Led Zeppelin, Beth Hart, and Joe Bonamassa, ‘Walking To New Orleans’ captures the good vibes Benson saw as the most important quality. “Every day started with us feeling one another out in the studio,” offers Benson. “I wanted this album to sound like we’d been playing together forever, and it worked out, too, because we began to click as time went on.” He continues, “We didn’t try to improve on the ‘50s, because you can’t. That era had its own vibe, and that vibe brought us to where we are now.”
