| BROOK
BENTON (ARTIST BIOGRAPHY)
Brook Benton (19 September 1931 — 9 April 1988) was
an American singer and songwriter most remembered for his mournful
R&B ballad, "Rainy Night in Georgia."
Born Benjamin Franklin
Peay in Camden, South Carolina in 1931, he became a gospel singer at
a young age. While still a child he worked delivering milk in the
morning and joined the Camden Jubilee Singers.
He enjoyed writing
songs and in 1948, at age 17, journeyed to New York City to try to
sell some of them. With his gospel singing background, it was not
long before he drifted in and out of gospel groups such as Bill
Langford's Spiritual Singers, the Langfordaires, the Golden Gate
Quartet, and the Jerusalem Stars. Brook returned to South Carolina
and drove a truck for a while while continuing his music career. He
joined an R&B singing group, the Sandmen, and once again went north
in search of a big break.
Brook found steady work
making hundreds of demo records for such established singers as Nat
"King" Cole, Clyde McPhatter, and Roy Hamilton. He co-wrote a number
of songs with Clyde Otis. He first recorded under his own name for
the Okeh label in 1953. Brook signed as a solo act with Epic and had
his first minor hit with A Million Miles From Nowhere on Vik. He
went on to Mercury along with Clyde Otis and arranger Belford
Hendricks, and it was at Mercury that he would meet with his
greatest success.
In 1959 he broke
through with two hits, It's Just A Matter Of Time, and Endlessly.
The former reached number 3 on the pop charts and the latter number
12, and those were the first of 23 top forty hits that Brook Benton
would record, either as a solo or a duet, from 1959 to 1964.
Brook had a certain
warmth in his voice that attracted a wide variety of listeners. He
sang ballads that led to comparisons between Brook and such
established performers as Frank Sinatra, Nat Cole, and Tony Bennett.
He had another top ten hit with So Many Ways, then was teamed with
another emerging Mercury star, Dinah Washington. In 1960 this duo
put two songs in the top ten, Baby [You've Got What It Takes] and A
Rockin' Good Way [To Mess Around And Fall In Love].
In the early 60's the
hits that he recorded kept coming. These included a string of top
ten pop hits such as Kiddio, The Boll Weevil Song, and Hotel
Happiness. He was prolific in issuing records that sold, one of
which was Shadrack. The Boll Weevil Song was Brook's only successful
novelty song, and his highest charting song ever as it held the
number two slot for three weeks in the summer of 1961.
His string of
successful hits began to slow down somewhat in about 1963, although
he still managed to reach the top forty with records such as I Got
What I Wanted and Two Tickets To Paradise, and Going Going Gone in
1964 for Mercury. The arrival of the Beatles marked a change in
taste by the record buying public. Brook began to go from label to
label, recording for RCA, Reprise and Cotillion.
He managed to come back
with one more top ten song in 1970 on the Cotillion label, Rainy
Night In Georgia, which had been written by Tony Jo White [who had a
top ten hit of his own the previous year with Polk Salad Annie].
Brook Benton remained popular as a performer, particularly in Great
Britain, into the 80's. He died in New York City in 1988 of
complications from spinal meningitis.
(info from Tom Simon)
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