IN: George Benson (born March 22, 1943) is an American musician, guitarist, and singer-songwriter. He began his professional career at the age of 21 as a jazz guitarist. Benson uses a rest-stroke picking technique similar to that of gypsy jazz players such as Django Reinhardt. A former child prodigy, Benson first came to prominence in the 1960s, playing soul jazz with Jack McDuff and others.

By the mid-to-late 1970s, as he recorded for Warner Bros. Records, a whole new audience began to discover Benson. With the 1976 release Breezin', Benson sang a lead vocal on the track "This Masquerade" (notable also for the lush, romantic piano intro and solo by Jorge Dalto), which became a huge pop hit and won a Grammy Award for Record of the Year. (He had sung vocals infrequently on albums earlier in his career, notably his rendition of "Here Comes the Sun" on the Other Side of Abbey Road album.) The rest of the album is instrumental, including his rendition of the 1975 Jose Feliciano composition "Affirmation". In 1976, Benson toured with soul singer Minnie Riperton, who had been diagnosed with terminal breast cancer earlier that year and, in addition, appeared as a guitarist and backup vocalist on Stevie Wonder's song "Another Star" from Wonder's album Songs in the Key of Life. During the same year, 1976, the top selling album 'Breezin' was released on the Warner Brothers label featuring the Bobby Womack penned title track and the Leon Russell penned This Masquerade which is now a jazz standard. Both tracks won Grammy awards that year and the LP put Benson into the musical limelight both in the USA and in Europe. Ironically, Benson had been discouraged up until this time, from using his singing skills, mainly as the company decision makers felt he wasn't competent enough vocally, and he should stick to playing the guitar. It was here that he clearly proved them wrong. He also recorded the original version of "The Greatest Love of All" for the 1977 Muhammad Ali bio-pic, The Greatest, which was later covered by Whitney Houston as "Greatest Love of All". During this time Benson recorded with the German conductor Claus Ogerman. The live take of "On Broadway", recorded a few months later from the 1978 release Weekend in L.A., also won a Grammy. He has worked with Freddie Hubbard on a number of his albums throughout the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s. The Qwest record label (a subsidiary of Warner Bros., run by Quincy Jones) released Benson's breakthrough pop album Give Me The Night, produced by Jones. Benson made it into the pop and R&B top ten with the song "Give Me the Night" (written by former Heatwave keyboardist Rod Temperton). He had many hit singles such as "Love All the Hurt Away", "Turn Your Love Around", "Inside Love", "Lady Love Me", "20/20", "Shiver", "Kisses in the Moonlight". More importantly, Quincy Jones encouraged Benson to search his roots for further vocal inspiration, and he rediscovered his love for Nat Cole, Ray Charles and Donny Hathaway in the process, influencing a string of further vocal albums into the 1990s. Despite returning to his jazz and guitar playing most recently, this theme was reflected again much later in Benson's 2000 release Absolute Benson, featuring a cover of one of Hathaway's most notable songs, "The Ghetto". Benson accumulated three other platinum LPs and two gold albums.
QUESTION: Did Benson tour during this time period?
IN: Von Teese was born in Rochester, Michigan, the second of three daughters. Her father was a machinist and her mother a manicurist. She is of English, Scottish, Armenian, and German heritage. Dita has stated that one of her grandmothers was half-Armenian and adopted into an Anglo-Saxon American family.

Von Teese has performed in adult and mainstream films. In her early years, she appeared in fetish-related, soft-core pornographic movies, such as Romancing Sara, Matter of Trust (in which she is billed under her real name of Heather Sweet), and also in two Andrew Blake hard-core fetish films, Pin Ups 2 and Decadence. In recent years, she has appeared in more mainstream features, such as the 2005 short film, The Death of Salvador Dali, written by Delaney Bishop, which won best screenplay and best cinematography at SXSW, Raindance Film Festival, and Mill Valley Film Festival, and won Best Actress at Beverly Hills Film Festival. She starred in the feature film Saint Francis in 2007. In addition, she has appeared in a number of music videos, including the video for the Green Day song "Redundant," the video for "Zip Gun Bop" by swing band Royal Crown Revue, Agent Provocateur's video for their cover of Joy Division's "She's Lost Control," and (performing her martini-glass burlesque routine) the video for "Mobscene" by Marilyn Manson. She was featured in a striptease/burlesque act in George Michael's live tour 2008, for the song "Feelin' Good". In addition to this, she appeared at the final of the Eurovision Song Contest 2009 as the central feature of Germany's entry, Miss Kiss Kiss Bang by Alex Swings, Oscar Sings. She also appeared in the music video "Up in the Air" by Thirty Seconds to Mars in 2013. She stated in 2007, "I don't understand why women feel the need to go into acting as soon as they become famous ... But I suppose if the part were aesthetically correct, then maybe I could consider it." In January 2011, Von Teese guest-starred in the CBS police procedural drama CSI: Crime Scene Investigation, in which her friend Eric Szmanda starred, in the episode "A Kiss Before Frying." She played Rita von Squeeze, a femme fatale version of herself, who seduces Szmanda's character, Greg Sanders, in a plot inspired by film noir.
QUESTION:
What was the public's reaction?