Benny Mann began his musical career in 1987 playing flute as a fifth grader in the Gateway Regional Middle School Music Program. By high school he had also learned to play saxophone and had become a staple of the Gateway High School Jazz Ensemble. He had grown fairly skilled in improvisation on flute and won the “Best Jazz Improvisation” award a Hershey Park Jazz Competition in 1994.

Following his graduation in the summer of 1996 Benny formed the local ska group “Moonstomper” with several other Gateway students. He penned lyrics and horn lines to a handful of songs and fronted the group as lead singer and horn section leader. The group garnered brief success playing local parties and gaining a standing gig in the Lava Lounge at the Metro Club in Northampton, Massachusetts. In July of 1996 they booked a breakthrough gig opening up for Ska sensations “The Checkered Cabs” and “JC Superska” at Pearl Street Night Club, again in Northampton, Massachusetts. Following the success of this gig, the band entertained offers for representation and a future live radio performance.

In the fall of 1996, Benny’s acceptance to Hamilton College in upstate New York presented a hard crossroads for the young musician. In the end, his choice signaled his exit from the group. Though a hard decision at the time, Benny would eventually appreciate the moment. He had learned much from this first and most formative musical experience.

At Hamilton College, Benny played alto sax in the college jazz ensemble and received private music instruction in improvisation and saxophone technique. This continued for two years until he decided to leave the restrictions of the academic music environment to strike out on his own. He joined a local college rock band, “SugarKane”, playing lead sax and writing lines for the modest horn section. Benny left the group when he decided to spend a semester in Washington, DC in the fall of 1998.

Benny had begun playing guitar in the summer of 1997 and as time went on he grew more and more enamored with the tones of his acoustic guitar. In Washington, he visited bars and clubs and longed for the spotlight he had briefly enjoyed as the lead singer for “Moonstomper”.

On his return to Hamilton in 1999, Benny started writing songs with varied levels of success and formed a group that would evolve into the incarnation “Sneaky Pete”. This band attracted local success covering diverse rock and blues tunes and playing college venues in the Utica, NY area. The group would eventually break up following graduation in 2000 though there would be one last reunion performance the following fall.

After graduation from Hamilton College in 2000, Benny took up employment in sales for MCS Canon in New York City and lived in Jersey City, New Jersey. Each day he would commute under the Hudson River on the PATH Trains to the World Trade Center, his assigned territory. New York was a new, wild and exhilarating place for the native of Western Massachusetts. One day on a round of cold calling, Benny stumbled upon a music organization called the “Off Wall Street Jam”. It was a collection of individual musicians with day jobs who got together and performed as groups in the New York City area. Benny soon joined a blues group named “The One Eyed Jacks” and played lead sax and occasionally sang lead vocals for the band. He performed at several local clubs including “The Orange Bear”, “Tribeca Blues”, and “Le Bar Bat” in Manhattan. It was in this group that Benny really found his voice. Exposed to the sounds of a wide diversity of blues musicians he had finally found a style that he would utilize in his own creations.

Unfortunately, in the winter of 2001, short on cash and happiness, Benny decided to leave New York on the account that salary from Canon was no longer supporting his lifestyle. He left the city and “The One Eyed Jacks” and returned to Western Massachusetts in search of a different life.

In February, following a B.B. King performance Benny met a contact that suggested applying for a teaching position at a local magnet school in Holyoke. Following a brief interview, he was hired and began a teaching career as an instrumental music instructor at Holyoke Magnet Middle School for the Arts. He began playing trumpet, trombone and clarinet so he could teach those instruments as well.

In the year or so following the move back to Massachusetts, Benny continued to write music and drifted in and out of several local bands, always disillusioned by music groups relying solely on covers and the music of the larger mass media. He was thirsting for an environment in which he could perform his original music for a wide audience.

Finally, in the summer of 2002, exasperated with the inability to assemble a working band Benny decided to just do all the work himself. Following several test sessions at Soundstream Recording Studio in Northampton, Massachusetts, Benny began work on a full-length album that would be titled “Life in Poetic Terms”. He enlisted the help of local drummer and sound producer Chris Gillman and recorded roughly eleven songs. By the February of 2003 the album was finished and the time of promotion had begun.

…To be continued.