Jiffry gives his bass touch to George Benson’s latest album
Hussain Jiffry is the Sri Lankan born Grammy-Award winning musician featured on George Benson’s new album ‘Dreams Come True: When George Benson Meets Robert Farnon’.
Jiffry plays bass guitar on the track ‘A Song For You’. The album was one of Benson’s earliest recordings done in London with Robert Farnon and his orchestra back in 1989. Strangely the recording went missing and was only discovered about a year ago in Benson’s archive.
Randy Waldman, a longtime friend of Benson’s was commissioned to be co-producer, music director and piano player, adding overdubs, choral arrangements on the reimagined album.
Hussain Jiffry: Live at Vibrato LA. Pic by Cathy LaFever. Jiffry is seen with George Benson on our Magazine cover
Speaking to the Sunday Times, Hussain Jiffry said that his good friend Randy Waldman had approached him with the idea of re-doing the bass part on ‘A Song For You’. Jiffry jumped at the idea as George Benson had been a music hero from his teenage days. He went to work on the song at his studio and later sent it over to Waldman to do the final touches nearly a year ago.
On June 14 the lost album was finally released after 35 years containing 11 tracks including ‘A Song For You’ with Hussain Jiffry on bass guitar, along with other tracks like ‘Autumn Leaves’, ’Yesterday’ (cover of the Beatles classic) and ‘At Last’. Incidentally ‘A Song For You’ was written by Leon Russell who also penned ‘Masquerade’, George Benson’s first Grammy
Award-winning song.
Jiffry started his music career while studying at Wesley College, Colombo. The first band he joined was Cats Eye fronted by fellow schoolmate Kamal Addararachchi. Later he joined Charade, then formed his own band Stratus co-led by Shiraaz Nooramith on drums and featuring Marino De Silva and Adrian De Silva. He later played for Noeline & Galaxy and while playing bass for Galaxy, was asked to join Fame led by Sheridan Lye to be their keyboard player and tour Europe. Three years later Jiffry joined Grace as their bass player, while the band was doing a stint in Switzerland.
Jiffry later moved to the US to study music at the Musicians Institute in Hollywood. After he graduated, he decided to settle down in Los Angeles and got the opportunity to perform and record with celebrity artists such as Whitney Houston, Dionne Warwick, Michael Bolton, Bobby Brown, Captain & Tennille, Chaka Khan, Crystal Gayle, Carol King, Sergio Mendes, Yanni and many more. In recent years he has been touring with the legendary Herb Alpert.
Robert Farnon with whom Benson first recorded the recently released album was a composer and conductor-arranger who worked with the likes of Frank Sinatra, Lena Horne, Tony Bennett and Sarah Vaughan, among others. He was also the composer of the theme music for the TV series Secret Army. Farnon who won four Ivor Novello Music Awards and was awarded the Order of Canada, died in 2005.
‘Dreams Come True: When George Benson Meets Robert Farnon’ is the first album release since Benson returned to the Warner Music Group fold.
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