CLEARLY, there's something magical about the Edinburgh Playhouse. Lou Reed has mouthed his love for the venue on numerous occasions; Tom Waits reckons it's the only theatre to play in Britain; and superstars like Neil Young, Morrissey and Van Morrison are just a few more famous names who all love to grace its stage.
Eight-time Grammy Award winner George Benson is another huge fan, insisting that every concert he's ever played there has been special.
Benson makes a welcome return to the Playhouse on Sunday week, where he performs a set from a back catalogue sp
anning five decades.
Throughout his career the guitar superstar and soulful crooner has embraced everything from straight-ahead jazz to contemporary jazz and R&B/pop vocals.
He's one of only a handful of artists who have achieved major critical and comm-ercial success in different genres, and his rich pedigree makes him one of the most respected names in the music industry.
"I'm so happy to be playing there," he gushed on his last visit to the Playhouse two years ago, and the 65-year-old is no less enthusiastic as he prepares to make his return to the Capital. "In Edinburgh we see a new generation of people coming to the concerts. I thought maybe I'd lost my audience until the last time that I was there, and it turned out to be one of the most incredible shows ever," he says.
"The Playhouse is perfect. I've played it many times and it's one of my favourites because it has all the right vibes, the right sound, and was designed beautifully."
That's no faint praise, coming as it does from a man considered to be one of the greatest ever jazz guitarists, although he is best known to the public at large as a pop and R&B singer, famous for a string of soulful hit singles during the 70s and 80s including Give Me The Night, Turn Your Love Around, In Your Eyes and Nothing's Gonna Change My Love For You.
Benson's style, however, is that of a true jazz player – and it's jazz that was his first love.
He was born in 1943, in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, where, depending on which version of the local folklore you choose to believe, he scored his first professional booking as a musician at the age of three, nine or 11.
"The only thing that I probably did at four years old was sing at some church or school event," he laughs, setting the record straight.
Even so, he did start out young. "I was a singer and I played ukulele from the time I was seven, and started playing guitar when I was nine," he recalls.
"I worked in a nightclub when I was eight years old and made my first recording when I was ten. Those are the numbers that you want to put together. Music was some-thing that came naturally to me. My mother used to sing to me all the time as a baby, so by the time I was three or four I knew all the standards. It wasn't a big thing for me – when I heard a melody I knew exactly what it was and I could sing along."
Though his influences were jazz guitarists – and in particular legendary musicians Charlie Christian and Wes Montgomery – it was a rock band that Benson formed when he was 17.
"I used to play that stuff Jimi Hendrix ended up playing, all that kind of music – loud and distorted," he says, before going on to recall when his passion for jazz really kicked in. "I was 19 when I first went out on the road with Jack McDuff (organist and organ trio bandleader who was prominent during the hard bop and soul jazz era of the 60s] and I left my hometown. It really was a great time.
"I needed to get out of Pittsburgh. Suddenly the world was much bigger than I'd imagined and every week we were playing a different location. It was all exciting and different."
By his 21st birthday, Benson's ability to construct swinging bebop lines at blistering tempos had him down as the natural successor to his hero Montgomery. He called his first album The New Boss Guitar, a nod to one of Montgomery's own records, Boss Guitar. While at the time some in the jazz world felt the young phenomenon had cockily named his album as a way of challenging the elder musician's status, Benson is quick to point out that the title was not intended to disrespect Montgomery.
"Let me straighten that out, because even in my biography it says something like 'I challenged Wes by calling my album . . .'," he says. "But, no. Montgomery was the undisputed champion of the guitar when he was alive.
"I didn't name the album, my producer did, and the reason he called it New Boss Guitar was this: if you look on the cover of the album you'll see a new guitar I had bought. It cost me a small fortune and I said, 'Man, this is a boss guitar', meaning the guitar was the boss."
Nevertheless, when Montgomery died prematurely, his producer signed Benson – some say, as a replacement – and before long he was the undisputed main man, accepted not only by jazz audiences but by non-jazz audiences.
By 1976, Benson had crossed over into the mainstream with the album Breezin, which led to a string of R&B-flavoured pop albums and hits singles, many of which the singer will revisit at the Playhouse on Sunday week.
"I know what people come to hear, and I think that's why I have such a good relationship with my audiences," he says.
"I know who I am and I know what they come to hear, so basically that's what I give them – a fresh version of what they know."
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George Benson, Playhouse, Greenside Place, June 29, 7.30pm, £34.50-£37.50, 0844 847 1660