This Masquerade

This Masquerade — George Benson: The Grammy Record of the Year from Breezin'

Note: this entry discusses George Benson's 1976 recording of "This Masquerade," not the song's original composition or any other artist's version. The song was written by Leon Russell and first recorded by him in 1972.

"This Masquerade" arrived in 1976 as the opening track and lead single from George Benson's album "Breezin'," a record released on Warner Bros. Records that would fundamentally redefine Benson's career and establish him as one of the dominant figures in the jazz-pop crossover market. Before "Breezin'," Benson was respected primarily within jazz circles as an exceptionally gifted guitarist, a musician's musician who had recorded for CTI and other labels and was regarded as among the finest jazz instrumentalists of his generation. The album changed everything by placing his vocal abilities at the center of a commercially oriented production designed to reach audiences far beyond the jazz constituency.

The production of "Breezin'" was overseen by Tommy LiPuma, a producer with a sophisticated understanding of both jazz craft and pop accessibility. LiPuma's approach to the album was to retain the musicianship that distinguished Benson as a serious artist while framing it within arrangements that were lush, warm, and immediately appealing to non-specialist listeners. The instrumentation was rich, drawing on strings, electric piano, guitar, and rhythm section work that felt effortless rather than technically demanding, even though the execution required considerable technical command. The album was recorded with session players of the highest caliber, and the collective performance level gave the final product a seamlessness that belied the complexity of what was being achieved.

Leon Russell had written "This Masquerade" as a song about romantic self-deception, two people maintaining the performance of a relationship that both know has failed. Russell's own recording appeared on his 1972 album "Carney" and was received respectfully as the work of a serious songwriter, but it did not become the vehicle for massive commercial success. Benson's recording was both more intimate and more expansive; his vocal performance brought a quality of genuine vulnerability to the material while his guitar playing and the surrounding arrangement elevated the emotional content without obscuring it.

Released as a single, "This Masquerade" reached number ten on the Billboard Hot 100, a remarkable achievement for a jazz-oriented artist whose previous recordings had rarely penetrated the pop mainstream at all. On the Adult Contemporary chart, it performed even more strongly, reaching the upper reaches of that format and establishing Benson as a major presence in the market for sophisticated popular music that appealed to adult listeners. The album "Breezin'" became the first jazz album to achieve platinum certification from the Recording Industry Association of America, an unprecedented commercial milestone for the genre.

The critical response matched the commercial one. At the 19th Grammy Awards in 1977, "This Masquerade" won the Grammy Award for Record of the Year, the most prestigious individual honor in the recording industry. The win was extraordinary in several respects: it represented the first time that a jazz-oriented recording had won the top Grammy prize in many years, it signaled the Recording Academy's recognition of the crossover achievement Benson and LiPuma had engineered, and it brought Benson's name to a level of public attention that his previous work, however respected, had not generated. The Grammy win was not merely an honor but a commercial event, driving additional sales of both the single and the album.

The album "Breezin'" itself became one of the most successful jazz-pop crossover records in the history of the format, spending weeks at the top of the jazz and pop albums charts and ultimately selling in very large numbers. It spawned a template for what became known as smooth jazz, a commercially robust genre that dominated certain radio formats through the late 1970s, 1980s, and beyond. Benson's success on "Breezin'" demonstrated to other jazz musicians and labels that a commercially oriented approach to jazz presentation could produce both artistic and financial rewards, and the album's influence on subsequent recordings by other artists was considerable.

Benson followed "Breezin'" with additional albums that extended his crossover success, including "In Flight" and "Weekend in L.A.," both of which reached wide audiences. His subsequent work across the following decades maintained his position as a major figure in both jazz and adult contemporary music, winning additional Grammy Awards and sustaining a touring career of considerable scale. But "This Masquerade" and "Breezin'" remained the foundational documents of his popular reputation, the recordings to which any discussion of his significance inevitably returned.

The recording's technical achievement is also worth underscoring. Benson's guitar playing on "This Masquerade" is a masterclass in restraint and taste; he does not compete with his own vocal or overwhelm the emotional content of the material with instrumental display, but his contribution as a guitarist is woven through the arrangement in ways that give the record a richness unavailable to a purely vocal performance. The balance he struck between his two primary talents, voice and guitar, was one of the defining achievements of the recording and one of the qualities that distinguished it from the many jazz-pop crossover attempts that did not achieve comparable success.