so if you want to sleep better or find relief fo your bad back, call now. ca the number on your screen for your free informion kit with dvd brochu and price list. call now and we' include a free $50 savings card. call now for your ee information and this free $50 savings card. call now o this special icons edition of "our world" with black enterprise, two music lends, i go tarrist and vocalist george beon and singer/songwriter ll withers, theye up next. i'm ed gordon.e.

welcome, later in the show whose easy voice and great writing has ven up some of the most classicongs of a generation but first, the lendary singer and guitarist, george bson. lile georgie benson began to local star in his hotown of a pittsbur. but was his pwess on the guitar thabrought him attention in the jz worlds he began tolay with greats like miles davis. after moderate success with some solo albums in 1976 benson

released the album "brehing." from that lp which became the first platinu jazz album to his late "songs and stories," george benson became a hit machine. ♪ tur your love around don't you turn me down ♪ >> reporter: this masquerade ive me the nit" on broadway and "turn y love around" are a fewf the songs that have become automatic sing-alongs for an eire generation. a lot of pple don't know that you have bee singing literally since you were a small child and in your hometown of pittsburgh, had really develop a following as a kid and then a teeger and you sang, then played the ukulele d then graduated to itar. >> that's exactly right. my father tol me that hend charlie parker used toatch me playn the corner. i ought he was -- i thought my he said oh, no, me and charlie

parker used to listen to you. artlakely and billy eckstein, allaw me whe i was a kid. >> it's interesng because you had a great opportuni to work with literally the contemporary greats o your time. and so whe you kick off that hancock, ron rter, et cetera et cetera, the facthat you now ve in that same road, if you will, w it your work ethic that allowed you to reach that height do yothink if. >> i think that's a lot t of tth to that bause i alws felt they were watching me there was high expectations for orgery benson u don't know how bou're going to be. en though guys can imagine what happened to lile george benson ♪ lots of love so give me the night ♪ >> trainin amongst the gats certainly got him ready for the big time, but it was benson's abily to match his smooth

that made him stand out.rist we talk about the enaring nature of songs and i watch people when youerform the fact get just two o three licks in a crow screens, i take i that you probably don't takehat for >> no, i don't. becae i saw the powf what th did to my life, that one song. ♪ are happy her with this lonely game >> it wasunprecedented inhe whole rld of jazz music that you could reach tt height and sell the kind of rerds, we sold 5 million records the first year. so 10 mlion copies that record "breathing" t that was a banr world. like the wholeorld turned into the planet george benson.

>> what's given you about so few that clely and t classic t song example of it to mes "love llad" i don't kno how anydy apprched"love ballad" after jeffery osbourne did what he did to it, yet not onlyid youave the gumption to do it, but you had the abili to make it yet a hit again. you have never shied away from finding a hit song and ming it, frankly,our own. how you do that? >> a producer said to me once, he said you can make any song a hit, just depends on how you arrangit, how you approach the song. and i remember something quincy nes said to me, hsaid, you know, quincy, you know george, everything used to be one by frames. it tk me a while to figure th out. at's he talking about. one bar is four beats.

don't, but theext bar repeats, same thing over. won't. i said tt's boring. i'm going to change it to that two bar phrase that quiy was talking out. that's onebar. thsecond bar, don't. ♪ neon lights around on broadway ♪ >> and it worked. then i put the stuffn that they didn't don them. the whole trip that made it my own piece of music. and it reallwent over well. >> back wh more in george bensonn a moment. >> if we try hard enoughe can get bi withers t wri us. what? i said that ain't ing to happen. ♪ no >> our headlin when i bought goldie i thought it was the st dolr i ever spent. i thought thatas the best dollar i ev spent.

but toy, ianted to try somethingff mcdold's dollar menu. with so much to chse from, i contemplated all my options. and finally went in for the 100%eefy, melty mcdouble. i thought it was the best dollar i er spent. ♪ ba da bba ba

expectantoms are especially encoaged to get bh the h1n1 and season flu vacces. learn more at flu.gov. together, we can allfight t.

grams, the guita master shows noigns of slowing down. his latest album "songs and stories"as original songsrom some of e great writers of our time, including smo robinn and lant dozer. beon even convinced the great bill withers, who hadn't written in years, to come out of retirement. the guitarist ss mic is >> everything begins with o and the foundation in the music song itself. hit record is the and en you got to have those two great elements, g to sound good andeel good, those are

musts. you have t have those. d then if you got a great ears.to te, you got peop's so i always look for songs that trying to prove i belong, pai k, all these cls, beating people up with thousan notes per second trying to play with that.sion and fire and we did hasome great bas. anwe did all those ings, but the things that went over with the songs that people could remember, easy listening sounds. ♪ lady love mene more time kisses in the moon lht ♪ >>hey loved that. ♪ ge me the right feeling on brdway ♪ >> i saidwhat? is ts what you want t hear? i have plenty of that. >> george, what's amazing, too, is that you have been able t take these guys who have written this new project, you'v got

smoky binson, lamont dozer and you brought reallyn idol of s many and a man who is iconic, who hasnot, i told you, i was with him not long ago, who songwriting or performing, to of our detriment as fs for many, many years, tal to me about the collaboration with bill withers here. >> i'll you, that s like pullin teeth. but i hadn't seen him in so many years. we used to be on the road together back in the late '70s when i had "o broadway" and his massacre raid" and he was on the show and i remember him saying, i don'tike the road m going to take f, notoing to do this. he did. disappeared. his songs kept showing upyou know, and every last one of them kept saying, man, i wish iad d i that. yo know. d so, the pducer, john

burke, he said george, i think can -- we try hardnough we can get bil withers to write us. i said that ain't going to happen. he said he agree to haveome lunch with us. a few weeks later he called us and said, i have something that ihink you might appreciate. i said to myself, might appreciate. anything he putsn a piece of paperas value. for you? finally, what's left >> finally realize that music ain't no d. it ain't going nowhere, ain't going to go away. when you think aut just aew ars o on the same streets, wi the club with the same name, the greatest musicians that we know of, charl parker, dizzy ga lesspy, miles davis ey all played these clubs, but if you turn on the radio you don'hear them. it doe't mean that theirusic is gone. it's gng to resurface and we're gog to discover how

they're probably going to be bigger than they are now, if you can imagine that. so many things that can happen, every time i tried t retire, everybody said you can retire. comever and play some music. that'shy i kept it going. ♪ with love >> now on to legend number two, after leaving thenavy, our next guest too his acoustic guitar and moved to los angeles to pursue a singing career in 1967. good material was hard to come , so bill withers began to pen s own music. ♪ and that's when the magic

happed for this late bloomer. his first album "just as i am" was released in 1971 and boasted legendary tracks like grandma's hands and "ain't no sunshine." the best r&b song and those songs were jt the sta of a string of classics delived by withers. "lean on me," "use me" "lovely day" and "just the two ofus" are a few of titles at have when you look athe bill withers catalog and you now loo back and see tho years, those early, mid 0 years when you were jus firin on all linders, did you have any indication when you were writing them at tha time, performing th, doing it at that time, that you had sething special? maybe not classic, but you re on to shing special? >> you know, i had an odd thg.

actuallyi'm probablyore listened to nothan i was then. because then, first of all, i stard this music thing late, i had been in the navy nine years, you know, i was socialized as a whole different kin -- i was socialized as a sailor and an aircraft mechanic, so mic was sort of a -- kind o an early, mid-life aftertught for me. it took a while for people t get me, i guess. ♪ well it's too hot to sleep and i'm too gro to eat i don't care if i die or not ♪ music has touched millions hisifts in writing simple, clever, relatablelyrics. much of you music, bill, has touched e hearts of so many people i that we associa with were talking about, whether it's

grandma' hands or "ain't no sunshine" or the myrd of songs that you put o there, what was it about you that cou speako i suspect what you lived and give it publicly to people? >> well, first of all, if you lo at my whole thing, you ow, things tha people would know me by, a large pt of it wasn't about boy/girl sff. boy/girl sles change from now, you know, now people go pretty far,like, you know, what ty want to do to each other specifically, graphically and whatever. i think th fact that i dealt with subjects like grandmothers, that's unconditial kind of lo. it's not that fickle, yoknow, i love you until i find somebody that looks bter than you.

"lean on me" nothing to do with the boy/gi thing. so i think once something like that is injected in there, is tranerable from generation to and also humility doesn't hurt for things to st. you know, f you to admit that you wereot the winner in this situation. now, boyhese guys arewinners, my moy, my car,y thin my whatever, you knowhat i mean. so ifou look athings like "ain't no suhine" the's a vulnerability, you know what i mean? you know, even something like "use me" that's kd of sassy in one way, but there's a vulnerability in the other one. u know, so i think the subject matter of that stuff andhe

fact that it was just kind of a geric kind of affection thing. ♪ny time she goes ay >> more with the one and only bill withers right after this. >> somebody's alws accusing me of wring something about some woman that didn't even know wh i wrote it.

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bonded leather sof at the sensatial low price, just $32 very cool styling. affordable. just $329, from jennifer. have bn remadend sampled by many, and even though withers stopped performing yearsago, his music is as popar as ever. >> for me, i know when'm done iting something, when i e something. >> in your mind's eye? >> yeah. if itakes y see something, you know what i mean? you mentionedgrandma's hands. everybody sees someing, diffentisuals from peoe like barbra streisand, who's jewish and recorded that song, she didn't see the same grdmother that i saw, but you

sesomething, you know what i mean? at least forme. then i say okay, i'll keep this. >> howuch of what you wrote was ao biographical, that you truly lived it? >> thas a fun one. because somebody's always accusing me of wring something about some woman that i didn't even knowhen i wrote it. probably it' a generic thing, you know, hopefully, hopefully inhe course of your life, you have all these different contactsndxperiences and like you say,imes when you win,imes when you lose, times when you jt run away because you don't even want to stick around for the results, and u are just sitting around ratching yourlf and different stuff crosses your mind at different times. i don't know if i plainedhat

very well. but probably everything is autobiographic for everybody. >> what, for u, i ask this of many musiciansnd unfairly so, almost asking who's yr favorite child, is there a consummate for you, a favite bill whers song? >> well, to me it's like ty're all one song, you know. we wake up difrent days feeling ffent stuff,ou know. there are differe requirements for differentimes. so for me, it's like --t's like a bk and there's certain chapters, you know what i mean? >> let me go to th horse's mouth an ask you a queion that is often written about you and i wonder how much oft is true. the fact that you, in asense, like a barry sanders, walked away from what y did so well and what you loved as many saw as a premature age, it is often

coined you walked away from it because you were soisgusted with thendustry, you wanted no more to do with and that was it, how much of that is real >> first of all, i'm not that fragile. i'm also not that mb. that would not be very smart. so no, no it's just -- it just wasn't in my dna to keep -- probably what i'missing is, i don't have thatene that needs to draw attention to melf. and i'm also aractical person, you know. i mean, i make good living, so threw the was nothing that drove me to just kp grinding away, you know. ♪ six years toose itll have mercy that's a long time♪ >> we start with a fresh grade " egg. we break it, then we fix it.

that what we're made of. ♪ that♪ ba da ba ba ba of.

we break it, then we fiit. so you can start your da sunny side up. th's what wee made of. ♪ ♪ ba da ba ba ba the days are long. the nights get lely. we have responsibilities. we have a commitme to our country to o families our wis and husbands our granhildren and toach other. the usis a bond that we share to help us staclose here at home and far away. the uso is always there and we need you.

[male announce this is how america supports our troops. the uso depends on tenerosity the americapeople, people just likeou. to find out mo about how you can help visit our website at uso dot org the uso until ery one comes home. coming home can be hard f you're a veteran of iq or afghanistan. you may feellike you're. but you're not one. at iava.o, your fellow vets are all around you.

join our free online commuty. get the resources yoneed and connect to otherets who know where u're ng from. that doest for this edion of "our world" o thanks to georgebensonnd bill withers. visit our website at blackenterprise.com. until next time, i'm ed gordon and thanks for making our rld, your world.