Brook Benton

Benjamin Franklin Peay (September 19, 1931 – April 9, 1988), known professionally as Brook Benton, was an American singer and songwriter whose music spanned rock and roll, rhythm and blues, and pop music genres in the 1950s and 1960s, with hits such as "It's Just a Matter of Time" and "Endlessly".

His last hit was the 1970 ballad "Rainy Night in Georgia". Benton scored more than 50 Billboard chart hits as a singer/songwriter and with compositions he wrote for other performers.

Benton began singing gospel music in a Methodist church choir in Lugoff, South Carolina, where his father was choir master.

In 1948, Benton went to New York where he joined The Langfordaires and The Jerusalem Stars before joining The Sandmen. Epic Records signed The Sandmen in 1954, immediately sending the group to record at the Columbia studios in New York. Columbia placed The Sandmen on its Okeh Records. Upon a second recording session, Okeh decided to push Benton as a solo artist. Benton recorded his first solo, "The Kentuckian Song", the theme from a movie of the same name.

Benton switched to RCA's Vik subsidiary in 1957, where he had a single chart appearance, 1958's "A Million Miles From Nowhere", which peaked at No. 82 on U.S. charts. He wrote two songs that charted for other performers, Clyde McPhatter's "A Lover's Question" and Nat King Cole's "Looking Back".

Biography summary from English Wikipedia, photograph via Wikimedia Commons.