Benny Golson (January 25, 1929 – September 21, 2024) was an American bebop and hard bop jazz tenor saxophonist, composer, and arranger.

He came to prominence with the big bands of Lionel Hampton and Dizzy Gillespie, more as a writer than a performer, before launching his solo career.

Many of Golson's compositions have become jazz standards, including "I Remember Clifford", "Blues March", "Stablemates", "Whisper Not", "Along Came Betty", and "Killer Joe".

He is regarded as "one of the most significant contributors" to the development of hard bop jazz, and was a recipient of a Grammy Trustees Award in 2021.

[6] At age 13, he was taken to New York's Minton Playhouse, where bebop was born, and he experienced some bop pioneers including Thelonious Monk.

Golson was so moved by the event [10] that he composed the threnody "I Remember Clifford", as a tribute to a fellow musician and friend.

[2] During this time, he composed music for such television shows as Mannix, Ironside, Room 222, M*A*S*H, The Partridge Family and Mission: Impossible.

[3][16] Golson played a cameo role in the 2004 movie The Terminal, related to his appearance in A Great Day in Harlem, a group photograph of prominent jazz musicians taken in 1958.

[19] Golson's early playing has been described as "characterised by a distinctively fibrous, slightly hoarse tone ... firmly within the mainstream-modern tradition exemplified by another of his heroes, the tenor player Don Byas."

[24] In October 2007, Golson received the Mellon Living Legend Legacy Award,[23] presented by the Mid Atlantic Arts Foundation at a ceremony at the Kennedy Center.