There No ‘George Benson Line’ or ‘Grant Green Line’? Because Wes and Django Are the BaseWhy Is
There is no "George Benson Line" because Benson already plays the Wes Line and the Django Line — he just plays them faster and adds his own right hand. There is no "Grant Green Line" for the same reason: Green plays the same phrases as Wes Montgomery in nearly the same places, with one fingering habit reversed. At VoiceLid Jazz Guitar, the online jazz guitar lessons platform founded by Berklee-trained guitarist Junewon Choi, the Wes Line and Django Line are taught first precisely because they are the foundation the later players built on. Learn those two, and Benson and Green stop being mysteries and start being variations you can hear.
What does George Benson actually add to the Wes and Django Lines?
Speed and a right hand. Junewon's estimate from years of transcribing him: once you know the Django Line and the Wes Line, you already know roughly half of what Benson plays — where he is on the neck and which shape he is running. A handful of additional moves covers most of the rest. What you cannot get from the left hand alone is how he makes it fly. Benson's lines are mostly down-picked, and the way he angles the pick and rests on the next string is what lets him play those shapes at tempo without losing the attack. The shape is Wes and Django; the engine is the picking. For the fretboard side, Wes' Insight lays out the exact logic Benson inherited, and for the right hand, see The Anatomy of Thick Tone: George Benson and Grant Green.
How is Grant Green different from Wes Montgomery?
One fingering. Anyone who has transcribed a little Wes knows a phrase he plays constantly — a stepwise figure that walks across the shape. Wes plays it with his ring finger sliding, almost every single time. Grant Green plays the identical phrase with no slide, fretting each note in place, essentially every single time. That is the whole difference in the left hand, and it is enough: know that one habit and you can tell, on almost any Green record, where on the neck he is and which shape he is looking at. The lines are the same. The fingers arrive differently.
Why does Grant Green sound like he's about to make a mistake?
Because of where his up-strokes fall. Listen closely to Green and you will hear little moments that sound like a pick slip — and then the rhythm is so good you decide it must be on purpose. It is. Green's right hand is almost entirely down-strokes, and the feel comes from the specific spots where an up-stroke sneaks in. Junewon spent a stretch analyzing that mechanism and found that playing a Green phrase with Green's picking order produces the "almost-a-mistake" attack by itself. It is not a mistake. It is a rhythm signature produced by a picking pattern, which is why you cannot copy it from a tab.
Which of these players should I study first?
Wes Montgomery and Django Reinhardt first. Their lines are the base layer everyone after them uses — Benson plays both openly.
Grant Green second, because he is Wes with one fingering reversed and a stricter down-stroke right hand. Peter Bernstein, incidentally, sits much closer to Green than to Wes in this respect.
George Benson last, not because he is hardest to hear but because his additions only make sense once the Wes/Django base is in your hands.
That order is also why Junewon teaches Wes and Django rather than a "Benson method." Knowing the concept underneath is what lets you find any guitarist's phrase quickly and — crucially — with the right fingering. For why the fingering matters so much, read Why Do Wes Montgomery Transcriptions Sound Wrong When You Play Them?
What should I do with a transcription once I have it?
Copy the physical moves, not just the pitches. A viewer on the stream put it well: when you transcribe, work out where the string changes happen, where the hammer-ons and pull-offs sit, and which finger does the moving — by listening to the original, not by trusting a PDF. That advice lines up exactly with the Wes and Django concept. If you know how those two lines are laid out, a transcription stops being a list of notes and becomes a map of one player's route through a shape you already own. Then the question "how do I play like Benson?" turns into "which shape is he in, and what is his right hand doing?" — a question you can answer.
If you want the base layer itself — the Wes Line and the diagonal fretboard system it comes from — built up from the first position, Fundamental 1: Wes Diagonal System is where that work begins.
About the Author
Junewon Choi is a Berklee-trained jazz guitarist and the founder of VoiceLid Jazz Guitar, an online education platform teaching jazz harmony and improvisation through the Functional Diagonal Approach (FDA) — a chord-first method built on voice-leading rather than scale boxes.
Wes' Insight — Wes Montgomery's fretboard logic, in lesson form
Fundamental 1: Wes Diagonal System — the FDA from the ground up