Singer Al Jarreau recorded-and shelved-two albums before finally releasing his latest, ”Heaven and Earth,” in June.
”I listened and relistened to the recordings,” Jarreau said during a recent promotional tour. ”It`s great material, and I`ll get back to it someday . . . but I thought, this was really so predictably Jarreau.”
Jarreau headed back to the studio yet again, this time with producer Narada Michael Walden.
”I wanted to have that special feeling about my first statement in the
`90s,” said Jarreau, whose last album, ”Heart`s Horizon,” came out in 1988.
”In the past, that special feeling always came much earlier,” he said with a laugh.
”I`ve never leaned so hard on my R&B side as I have for this album,” he said. Featuring rhythm-and-blues tracks such as ”Blue Angel” and ”What You Do to Me,” the album still captures Jarreau`s distinctive mix of jazz and pop.
Jarreau said that Walden helped him create ”something a little different than what I might have chosen.”
”Narada has great intuition, but is also a great academic. He found stuff in me hiding in a corner that he pulled out of me.”
Jarreau recalled the time he heard the chord changes of a song that a writer was preparing for someone else.
”I just started singing these words in a high voice . . . and Narada said, `Alley, Alley, that`s it!` ” (Walden`s nickname for Jarreau is Alley Oop.)
Jarreau said he protested, saying it wasn`t really his style.
”Then Walden said, `Come on, buddy, give it to me.` He coaxed me to do things I don`t typically do. It was a nice pairing-he`s a high-energy guy, a catalytic converter.”
Jarreau said he wrote lyrics and music for only a few of the songs on his latest album.
”If I don`t limit myself to only the stuff I write, then I get to do the best of what there is. Is that socialism at work in the arts?” he asked with a laugh. ”It`s collaboration, anyway.”
Jarreau said he wanted to make a rhythm-and-blues statement with ”Heaven and Earth.”
”I see that the R&B scene is changing,” he said. ”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.` ”
Jarreau, 52, was born in Milwaukee and absorbed a variety of musical influences while growing up.
”I know the lyrics to more polkas than most German and Czech people. It`s all in those wrinkled folds of gray matter,” Jarreau said, pointing to his head.
Jarreau, who was singing by age 4, said he lived across the street of a Catholic church. ”I`m not a Catholic, but I felt real close to it,” he said. ”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 got a bachelor`s degree in psychology from Ripon College in Wisconsin and then a master`s degree from the University of Iowa.
”I knew I would be doing music the rest of my life at some level, even if it was after work in some cocktail lounge in a Holiday Inn,” he said.
He went to San Francisco, working as a rehabilitation counselor by day and playing gigs with George Duke`s jazz trio by night. After four years, he quit his day job.
”I just was not ready for that kind of work,” he said. ”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.”
That ”circus” turned out to be nightclubs in Los Angeles, and later New York and other cities. He signed a recording contract with Warner Bros. Records in 1975, and since then has won four Grammy Awards.
Jarreau will go on a concert tour in Europe this fall before performing in the U.S. Because he`s gone so often from his Los Angeles home, he said he has ”a dog who doesn`t recognize me and a son who doesn`t cry when I leave.” His wife of 20 years, Susan, has adapted to his absences as well.
”Marriage is tough stuff to make work, under the best of circumstances,” Jarreau said. ”Then add to it a person who`s always staring out the window, thinking of something else . . . but she knows this is what I do-no surprises.”
