Jarreau, Al 1940–

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Al Jarreau 1940–

Vocalist

Al Jarreau became one of the world’s foremost vocalists in the mid-1970s and continued to give crowd-pleasing performances into the 1990s. Though his eclectic style is difficult to categorize, Jarreau won fans of a number of different musical tastes, including rhythm and blues, jazz, and pop. Jarreau became known as the “Acrobat of Scat” for his use of African clicks and Oriental phrasing in his music, borrowing from the scat tradition that evolved out of the bebop style of the 1940s. This unique vocal delivery, combined with his creative fusion of diverse musical genres, earned him several awards and contributed to his longevity as a recording artist.

Jarreau was born Alwyn Lopez Jarreau on March 12, 1940 in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. His father was a minister and his mother played piano in church. Al was the fifth of six children, and he became involved in music early on in life, singing at the age of four. The family lived across the street from a Catholic church, and although the family was not Catholic, the music Jarreau heard from the church influenced his love of music. “I’m not a Catholic, but I felt real close to it,” he told the Chicago Tribune in 1992. “On Sunday mornings I was just hanging out with the paperboys, eating a sweet roll and drinking coffee. I heard the music of the Catholic church, and in parts of my music, it’s in there.”

Jarreau began singing in his own church and with neighborhood street harmony groups, filling whatever part was open. He sang in jazz bands in high school, but even then his musical repertoire was quite eclectic. “I know the lyrics to more polkas than most German and Czech people,” he told the Chicago Tribune. “It’s all in those wrinkled folds of gray matter.”

While he never turned his back completely on his music, Jarreau put it on the back burner for a time after high school. He earned a degree in psychology from Ripon College in Wisconsin in 1962, and followed that up with a master’s degree from the University of Iowa in 1964. He then moved to San Francisco, where he worked as a rehabilitation counselor.

During his time in the Bay Area music began to creep back into Jarreau’s life. He began singing in nightclubs with a band called the Indigos, then landed a regular gig singing for the George Duke Trio three nights a week in

At a Glance…

Born Alwyn Lopez Jarreau, March 12, 1940, in Milwaukee, Wisconsin; son of Emile and Pearl Jarreau; married Phyllis Hall (divorced); married second wife, Susan; son, Ryan. Education: Ripon College, BS, 1962; University of Iowa, MS, 1964.

Career: Worked as a counselor for the handicapped in San Francisco, CA, 1965-68; jazz vocalist and composer, 1968-; solo recording artist, 1975-; Albums: We Got By, 1975; Glow, 1976; Look to the Rainbow, 1977; AII Fly Home, 1978; This Time, 1980; Breakin’ Away, 1981; L is for Lover, 1986; Hearts Horizon, 1988; Heaven and Earth, 1992.

Selected awards: Cashbox’s No. 1 jazz vocalist, 1976; Italian Music Critics’Award, Best Foreign Vocalist, 1977; winner of Down Beat Magazine’s Readers’ Poll, Best Male Vocalist, 1977-81; Grammy Award, Best Jazz Vocalist, 1978-79; Grammy Award, Best Pop Vocal, 1981.

clubs such as the Jazz Workshop, the Half Note, the Troubadour, and the Bitter West End. “I knew I would be doing music the rest of my life at some level, even if it was after work in a cocktail lounge in some Holiday Inn,” he told the Chicago Tribune. In 1968 he finally achieved enough success to quit his day job. “I was just not ready for that kind of work,” he told the Tribune. “I was inefficient or something. I got overwhelmed by it all…After some talks with my supervisors, I told them, ‘I’m off to join the circus,’ and that was it.”

Jarreau’s nightclub work began to expand, eventually branching out to include engagements in New York City. He crisscrossed the country for the next six years, and performed on television variety shows on occasion. Jarreau was discovered in 1974, when he opened a show for Les McCann at the Troubadour in Hollywood. Several record company executives were in the audience, and his performance earned him a record contract. Two weeks later he was in the studio recording his debut album.

That first album, We Got By, introduced the style that fans would expect from Jarreau over the years. Jon Hendricks and Dave Lambert have most often been identified as Jarreau’s primary influences, but his scat style is very eclectic, with some of his vocals being described as sounding African, Oriental or Arabic. It includes tongue clicks, gasps, and nonsense syllables. Some of his vocals do not fall within a jazz framework at all, but rather sound unmistakably like rhythm and blues or soul.

In 1976 Jarreau released his second album, Glow, and toured Europe for the first time. That tour was a watershed event in his life, for it was on that continent that he would enjoy some of his most enduring popularity. His third album, 1977’s Look to the Rainbow, was a live album recorded in Europe, and it included a song that would become one of his trademarks, a vocal version of the Dave Brubeck standard “Take Five.” That album won Jarreau his first Grammy.

Another Grammy would follow in 1978, when Jarreau was named Best Jazz Vocalist. His album that year, All Fly Home, contained cover versions of “She’s Leaving Home” and “Sittin’ on the Dock of the Bay.” He was named Best Jazz Vocalist at the Grammy Awards again in 1979. His 1980 album, This Time, brought in a new producer, Jay Graydon, and a focus on the material over Jarreau’s personal style.

In 1981 Jarreau saw his breakthrough as a commercial pop artist. His album that year produced his fourth Grammy and two hit singles: “We’re in This Love Together,” which emphasized his pop singing ability more than his jazz style, and the title cut, “Breakin’ Away.” The following year saw another hit single, “Teach Me Tonight.” He continued to record and tour throughout the 1980s, and enjoyed an unusual amount of commercial success for a jazz artist.

His commercial success, though, came primarily from his singles, and not, despite the platinum status of Breakin’ Away, from his albums. “I’m not one of those fortunate recording artists who have the luxury of continually producing big-selling albums,” he admitted to the Los Angeles Times in 1986. “I really have remained alive as a recording artist because I’m out there touring a lot. People come to hear the Al Jarreau live concerts and, fortunately, some of them buy records.”

One of the keys to Jarreau’s commercial success was his appeal to music fans who were younger than the typical jazz fan. His fusion of other contemporary styles into his music brought him popularity with people who were not, strictly speaking, jazz fans. But as the 1990s dawned and Jarreau turned 50, he began having more difficulty selling records to the younger demographic, and his sales began to slump. Four years passed between his last album of the 1980s, Heart’s Horizon, and his first of the 1990s, Heaven and Earth. He kept busy in the interim by contributing songs to the films Skin Deep and Do the Right Thing. On Heaven and Earth he tried to reclaim his share of the youth market by, as he told the Chicago Tribune, leaning “hard on my R&B side.” “I see that the R&B scene is changing,” he went on. “It’s a revolution…. The music is live and angry. I see my fans saying, ‘What in the world is going on?’ I say to them, ‘While you listen to rap and scratch, take this album along with you as an alternative.’”

Misfortune struck Jarreau in late 1995, when his fairly new Encino, California, home was damaged by an earthquake. It was also about this time that his contract with Warner Brothers ran out after 20 years. He recorded a few new songs for a greatest hits package in 1996, but it was unclear whether the contract would be renewed, and the impasse led to some hard feelings on Jarreau’s part. “They sit there and throw handfuls of artist mud against the wall,” he complained about the record business to the Los Angeles Times. “And what sticks they go and build a frame around for a few minutes. And I can tell you it’s not a gilded frame in which they’ve invested a whole lot. What they really want is these still wet-behind-the-ears people who will color their hair a strange color, turn their lives over to some hot producer, be there for five minutes of airplay in a year, get their pictures in a magazine and then be gone. They don’t want to deal with someone who understands the mechanism of this madness.”

Jarreau had never been completely comfortable with the recording process, and he gave the impression that it would not be the worst thing for him if he had to return to making a living doing one-nighters across the country. “Everything that’s happened for me up to now,” he told the Los Angeles Times, “has worked because I go out there and I do a good show. I’ve been doing that for more than 20 years, and that’s got nothing to do with the record company. I’ve stayed alive in the record business because I’ve been out there being a salesman, telling people, ‘Listen to this.’ They listen and bring a friend back, and that friend goes and buys a record and that’s my new customer. I’ll keep pounding on people’s doors, and just keep on doing what I’ve been doing, asking them to listen to the songs I have to sing.”

Jarreau also told the newspaper he remained optimistic about his future. “It’s been a good career,” he asserted. “Am I concerned about where things now stand with my recordings? Sure. I’m as nervous as a frog on a freeway. I keep waiting for one of the shoes to fall. But I have high hopes, high apple pie in the sky hopes, and I’m still thinking that there’s some serious success ahead of me.”

Selected discography

We Got By, Warner Brothers, 1975.

Glow, Warner Brothers, 1976.

Look to the Rainbow, Warner Brothers, 1977.

All Fly Home, Warner Brothers, 1978.

This Time, Warner Brothers, 1980.

Breakin’ Away, Warner Brothers, 1981.

Jarreau, Warner Brothers, 1983.

High Crime, Warner Brothers, 1984.

L is for Lover, Warner Brothers, 1986.

Heart’s Horizon, Warner Brothers, 1988.

Heaven and Earth, Warner Brothers, 1992.

Tenderness, Warner Brothers, 1994.

Best of Al Jarreau, Warner Brothers, 1996.

Sources

Books

Encyclopedia of African-American Culture and History, Volume Three, edited by Jack Salzman, David Lionel Smith and Cornel West, Macmillan Library Reference, 1996.

The Guinness Encyclopedia of Popular Music, Volume Three, edited by Colin Larkin, Groves Dictionaries, 1995.

The New Grove Dictionary of Jazz, Volume One, edited by Barry Kernfeld, St. Martin, 1994.

Rock On, The Illustrated Encyclopedia of Rock n’ Roll, The Video Revolution, by Norm N. Nite, with Charles Crespo, HarperCollins Children’s Books, 1978.