Loving George Benson and Earl Klugh

I know, I didn’t decide to learn to play the guitar but the sax, but that does not mean I cannot show my love for these two brilliant musicians.

I used to be a member of a jazz club when I was in the university. It was called the Jazz Nucleus. We didn’t play any music of our own, we just hung out together, organised open-air concerts where we played the old standards and some much newer stuffs. Ok, Grover Washington Jr., George Benson and Earl Klugh were not exactly new stuffs, but they were not Charlie Parker, Satchmo or the early Miles Davis either. I didn’t ‘discover’ jazz when I joined the club, but my love and interest in it deepened during that period. I owe a lot to Yemi Akande, Tunde Otubanjo and every other member of the club.

I remember an open-air concert – we really only played CDs and tapes on loud speakers – in front of the Alumni Centre of the University of Ibadan. It was the Christmas season and we had rented some lighting that we put around the top of a tree that was in front of the Centre. We started playing at about 7pm and we played till 10pm. In the last thirty minutes we put off the flood lights, left the Christmas lightings on and handed each person who was there a candle. We switched to some slow and smooth jazz renditions of standard Christmas tunes. I was behind the music desk and I could see the look, from the candlelight, on the faces of the people. It was one of those moments you kick yourself for not having a girlfriend.

Yea, yesterday I bought Absolute Benson, Miles Davis’ Mellow Miles and Earl Klugh’s Living Inside Your Love. I have since been thrown on a nostalgic trip….