A big mistake would be to change what an audience knows," he cautions. "People came to hear what they know. After you finish with that, if you want to go to the moon and go crazy, that's up to you. But I learned this from Duke Ellington: once a song becomes a classic, you don't mess with it. You leave it alone. And he was right. So I leave it alone. And it works.
"I love This Masquerade, Turn Your Love Around, On Broadway. If people want to hear it, I'm happy to play it. It's a two-way street: What can I do to make them remember why they loved the song in the first place?"
In Macao as the end of an Asian tour that started in Seoul and included stops such as Singapore, Benson admits that it was his first visit to the former Portuguese enclave.
"Yesterday, I went on a long tour to see all the different aspects of the city," he recalls. "Where normal folks go to shop, the residential areas with nice houses. Then the casinos. I've never seen anything quite this extensive. Inside, you can play football and baseball in any one of them - they are massive. We have a brand new casino where I live in Scottsdale, Arizona. It's very nice, but it looks like a toy compared to this.
"When I hear (casino mogul) Steve Wynn talk, I know that he's a guy who understands. He says that he is building another casino in Vegas. He must have confidence in the future. I don't gamble myself. I'm a family man. I've got seven boys and eight granddaughters. I want to make sure that they have a couple of dollars to spend.
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