Bermuda Jazz Festival on Saturday night, it was an unnecessary request: he had already picked it up, brought it under his control and was now toying with it in a most delicious way.

As he moved on to another of his greatest hits, `On Broadway', the crowd, numbering around 5,000, was completely under his sway -- the jazz guitarist who has crossed the boundaries into soul and pop making up for his diminutive stature with a massive and infectious stage presence.

Some purists will argue that Benson, now 56, has sold out -- his jazz repertoire greatly diminished by his commercial move towards the pop charts -- but the organisers of this festival knew what the audience wanted and were happy to provide.

Benson paid homage to his roots with the occasional standard and his own form of scat, mimicking what he plays on guitar -- but his fans wanted hits and that's what, in the main, he gave them: from the ethereal meanderings of `This Masquerade' to shameless disco grooves such as `Never Give Up on a Good Thing' and `Feel Like Making Love'.

Benson was undoubtedly the hit of a night that became progressively more soul-oriented.

Joe Sample, keyboardist with The Crusaders in the seventies and eighties, had started things off with his trio.

Bass and drums were present but it was no doubt who was the star: Sample, the 60-year-old former Motown session artist, seamlessly laying jazz styles one upon the other within numbers such as `Chain Reaction' and `Ashes to Ashes', tunes wherein sudden changes of chord and key appear to surprise you. Joined midway through by singer Lalah Hathaway, daughter of Donnie, he changed tempo, with revised versions of his compositions `One Day I'll Fly Away', made a hit by Randy Crawford, and a chugging, rhythm-inspired `Street Life'.

The pair found the audience in most receptive mood with the instantly recognisable opening bars of `Fever'.

Benson's popularity meanwhile, did have its downside -- his encores lasting so long that the final act, Oleta Adams, had little time to build on the atmosphere the previous acts had built up.

Adams is a consumate pianist and singer, with intros to songs almost Erroll Garner-inspired, having little to do with what comes next.

She must have been disheartened as people left to catch the last ferry, yet her performance of perhaps her best known song, `Get Here When You Can', was like a moment suspended in time. I would have challenged anyone not to get shivers up their spine or break out in goosepimples despite the heat of the night.

Nigel Henderson Back for more: George Benson comes out for another encore.