Oscar Woodbury

Oscar Benton (born Ferdinand van Eif on February 3, 1949) is a Dutch vocalist and the founder of the Oscar Benton Blues Band in 1967. The band rose to fame in 1968 by being a runner up in the Jazz Festival, Loosdrecht, Holland. In his solo career, Oscar Benton released with his 1981 homonymous album the Bensonhurst Blues, written by Artie Kaplan & Artie Kornfeld, and produced by the EMI Records. The Bensonhurst Blues, which is considered to be Oscar Benton's best hit, was part of the soundtrack of the 1999 movie La Bûche. Earlier it was on the soundtrack of the film Pour la Peau d'un Flic, 1.979, which features Alain Delon. The earliest version of that song is that of Artie Kaplan in his 1973 album Confessions Of A Male Chauvinist Pig produced by the Hopi Records…

At the height of his popularity, pianist Oscar Levant was the highest-paid concert artist in America. He outdrew Horowitz and Rubinstein, with whom he shared the distinction of a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. He performed under conductors including Toscanini, Beecham, Mitropoulos, Reiner and Ormandy, and was the definitive interpreter of his friend George Gershwin. Levant's 1945 recording of Rhapsody in Blue remained one of Columbia Records' best-selling albums for decades. That classic interpretation and all his other recordings for the label, spanning the years 1942 to 1958, have now been collected in this set: painstakingly restored and remastered from the original analogue discs and tapes, the vast majority of them are appearing for the first time ever on CD.

This double album matches and mixes together four masterful musicians: pianist Oscar Peterson, guitarist Joe Pass, bassist Niels Pedersen and harmonica great Toots Thielemans. Together they perform O.P.'s "City Lights" and ten veteran standards with creativity, wit and solid swing. There are a few miraculous moments as one would expect from musicians of this caliber and the results are generally quite memorable.