Brook Benton

One of a handful of black singers who wrote their own material in the early '60s, Brook Benton had four gold records and 16 Top 20 hits over a lengthy and resilient career. Benton's hits feature his smooth baritone (in a style he learned from Nat "King" Cole and Billy Eckstine) and lush string backing. In the early '50s he sang with Bill Landford and the Golden Gate gospel quartets. By the middle of the '50s Benton had begun recording pop songs for Epic and then Vik Records, for whom he had a minor 1958 hit, "A Million Miles From Nowhere."

Collaborations with songwriter Clyde Otis and arranger Belford Hendricks produced 1958 hits for Nat “King” Cole (“Looking Back”) and Clyde McPhatter (“A Lover’s Question”). In 1959 Otis helped get Benton a contract with Mercury, and Benton began four years of success for the label, beginning with four Benton/Otis/Hendricks compositions: “It’s Just a Matter of Time” (#3), “Endlessly” (#12), “Thank You Pretty Baby” (#16), and “So Many Ways” (#6).

Benton’s early-’60s hits included two duets with Dinah Washington, “Baby (You’ve Got What It Takes)” (#5, 1960) and “A Rockin’ Good Way” (#7, 1960), as well as the folk-tinged “The Boll Weevil Song” (#2, 1961) and “Frankie and Johnny” (#20, 1961). Other hits included more standard soul-pop fare like “Think Twice” (#11, 1961), “Revenge” (#15, 1961), “Lie to Me” (#13, 1962), “Shadrack” (#19, 1962), and “Hotel Happiness” (#3, 1963). Thereafter his Mercury releases fared noticeably poorer on the charts. He recorded for RCA (1965–67) and Reprise (1967–68) with meager results.

In 1970 he had one more big pop hit with a stirring version of Tony Joe White’s “Rainy Night in Georgia” (#4 pop, #1 R&B, 1970) on Cotillion. As the decade progressed, he recorded for MGM, Brut, Stax, All Platinum, and Olde Worlde. He died at age 56 from pneumonia.

from The Rolling Stone Encyclopedia of Rock & Roll (Simon & Schuster, 2001)