A Conversation with Al Jarreau – HuffPost 7.6.12

Mike Ragogna: Why, it’s Al Jarreau with his new album Al Jarreau and the Metropole Orkest Live. Can you go into what was behind this concert and release?

Al Jarreau: About four years ago, Vince Mendoza, who conducts and arranges for that orchestra and has had any number of great guests come and sing with it, called, and asked me if I would come and sing. It’s more than an orchestra, it’s the Count Basie Band with strings! (laughs) I mean, they swing, baby, with strings! It was just kind of an inside story, but singers who need the music to be (demonstrates a swing rhythm) know how hard that is to get an orchestra with sings to play like that. So when you find an orchestra that can play like that, it’s really an amazing thing, and it does something to your music that is really very special. People get to hear you in an environment that is just high and holy. The orchestra with every instrument that modern man knows about, it’s there to accentuate what is being played and performed, so to get to perform that way and get it recorded is a wonderful thing. That’s kind of the background, and we did some concerts together–maybe a couple in 2008 or 2009 and in 2010–and then said, “Let’s record this stuff.” I said, “Let’s do it yesterday!” And so we did.

MR: Nice. When you chose the set list for the concert, it must have been a little hard to whittle down from your huge catalog.

AJ: Well not at all. You know what happened? I wasn’t involved at all! (laughs)

MR: Vince did it?

AJ: I let Vince do it. I think that was one of the smartest things I’ve ever done. (laughs)

MR: Yeah, he’s amazing. I’ll say it.

AJ: There’s another part of me that would have been in there going, “No, no, no, we need to do this song because of this and that.” Vince knows the important stuff about what we were going to get into. He knows the importance of the orchestra, their details, how they play, who can solo, what solos are where, and he saw it all in his head. I couldn’t see that. He knows me.

MR: Vince obviously knows your voice.

AJ: Yes, that’s the point. He knows my voice, and he knows his orchestra. I don’t know his orchestra. He knows the stuff that will sparkle in his orchestra, so it’s a great listen for my audience. They get to come and sit there and hear me in that setting and hear the music expanded.

MR: Al, you still have your vocal chops to these ears, but what do you think of your own voice these days?

AJ: Well, I think it’s getting harder to get what I want out of it as the days go by. I’ve got an odometer on my voice that has out-odometered an odometer on an automobile. It’s been doing this for 60+ years, and when you do that, even if you’ve had some great training, your voice ages, and there are things that you wish you could reverse. My lows are wonderful and deep now, but I don’t have the same highs. Anyway, the course of my life has brought me to a lot of things that have been very important. I grew up the son of a Seventh Day Adventist minister, so I was really close to the church and sang church music between sips at my bottle, you know? I sat on the piano bench next to my mother. She was the church organist, so that music is deeply inside of me. When I went home, I had a sister eight years older, another sister ten years older, and a brother eleven years older, and a brother twelve years older. They didn’t have late night TV in those days, and my folks found other things to do…a family of six, dude!

MR: (laughs)

AJ: So I heard the music of the day. My brothers and sisters brought into the house to listen to for their own pleasure the music of the Basie Band and Ellington and Stan Kenton and all the big bands, and I heard Ella and Billy Eckstine and Sarah Vaughan and Nellie Lutcher in my house. That was the first music beyond the church that I heard. Well, of course, I heard Patti Page’s “How Much Is That Doggie in the Window” and Brenda Lee singing “…Jambalaya and a crawfish pie and fillet gumbo.” There was that great mix of music that became who I am with a breadth in my appreciations, and I mean deep appreciations for various kinds of music. I slept fourteen feet from a polka tavern as a kid growing up. I heard polkas all night long, people singing and drinking beers and having a great time. I know more polkas than Frankie Yancovic! (laughs) So all of that stuff was a great beginning and mixture of experiences of music to bring to the table where I heard Chuck Berry and Little Richard sing their first music, and Bill Haley and The Comets rocked right with them. That music is inside of me. I was singing doo-wop on the corner under the streetlight with four other guys when it wasn’t called doo-wop. We just got together and sang, so that music is inside of me. It’s a lot of stuff that has been rolling around in here and becoming this compost and has made me who I am as a singer. I just love the opportunity for that to express itself in the ways that I’m able to express it, and I don’t hold it back. I let it out. It’s all kind of tempered by this atmosphere in which the singer can improvise and do new and different unexpected things on the spot with other people. I like R&B and I like jazz and I like pop, so there it is. My God, I’ve been so lucky I’ve found an audience that is willing to take that journey with me.

MR: Yeah, and let’s look at some mile markers on your journey. You had the big hit “We’re in This Love Together.” What do you think about that song all these years later?

AJ: I love it! I’ll sing it tomorrow night with as much feeling as I ever sang it…maybe more! It has a broader meaning now. It’s not just a love song.

MR: Ah, you mean it’s more like a universal message these days. Can you go into the origins of that song and how you feel it applies now?

AJ: Well it’s Keith Stegall and Roger Murrah, two Midwest writers. I don’t know their repertoire, but they’ve written for other people. I was in the studio working with Jay Graydon–wonderful that I was working with him because Jay had been talking to me in those times about allowing myself to be a good R&B singer and, “…just sing it like an R&B singer, Al, don’t turn it into a platform for a jazz song. There are a lot of R&B people out there that you can find and meet and bring to what you do. Just sing (demonstrates the song). So I took that advice from my producer. He produced three records, maybe four, and so one morning, this song came in. It was a submission to my manager’s office, and one of the guys in the office said, “Al, I’m going to interrupt you guys. You’ve got to hear this song!” He came to the studio, played it for us, and we took off that roll of tape and put on a fresh roll of tape, and I learned “We’re in This Love Together.” The rest is kind of history.

MR: You also had sang a classic TV theme, “Moonlighting,” for that series.

AJ: Oh my! What a story! You never know. You sing a song for a movie or a TV program, and that project may never make it any farther than your lips and ears and the producers who said, “No, thank you.” So listen to this. I get a call from Lee Holdridge, and he says, “This is Lee Holdridge, Al. I’m a writer of music for television movies and all, and I’m going to do the music for a pilot in the Fall, and it’s going to star Cybill Shepherd, the model who’s making her way as an actress right now.” And then I hear papers rustling, “…and this new guy Bruce Willis.” You know that expression, “Who knew?” (laughs) Well, now, Bruce Willis is all over everything and everywhere, but that was his first time on screen probably except for some audition that he did. Brilliant, just brilliant work that he’s done. And that’s how it started out. And people from Jakarta, Indonesia, to Oslo, Norway, found me because of hearing that song. I made new friends. They found my music and went, “Hey, that guy’s not bad!” (laughs) They come around and bring their kids, and their kids are bringing their kids now.

MR: And you were part of the classic, “We Are The World.”

AJ: Well, I had been from Oslo to Jakarta in my life and seen people all over the world. I’ve been in the slums of Brazil in the favela. I know what the favela is–those shanty houses on the side of a hill. So yeah, when they asked me to be a part of USA for Africa and stand there on the stage with that array of celebrity and wonderful talent, you say, “What time do you want me there?” You cancel your medical appointments and everything and go.

MR: There were many voices on that recording, but your part is pretty memorable from the way you delivered it.

AJ: Well, that’s Quincy. That’s Quincy, and with great help from Lionel Richie and Michael Jackson, of course. They know me and what I would sing pretty well, and found something and carved out a little piece for me to sing. Those associations that come from people respecting your work and thinking that you should be part of special things is just invaluable stuff that you cherish in those little parts of your heart where you keep your cherishables.

MR: And your work is universally admired, your having been nominated for Grammys fifteen times, and winning seven. What are your thoughts on that?

AJ: Cherishables. That stuff that is high and holy! When your colleagues, the people who do what you do–writers and signers and horn players and music producers and video producers–listen to your music and go, “Good job, Al, good job! Good job, man! Take this award home with you and know that your friends in music think that this was great work, and it needs to be celebrated,” that’s amazing stuff. What I need to add to that is that people look at me and say my name in the same sentence as Quincy Jones and Michael Jackson and Stevie Wonder and Sting, but you know what? If I had one digit of their bank account, I could take a much-needed break and have a vacation and take my wife on vacation and just sit there and watch the world go around. I haven’t made any great money doing this. I’ve managed to pay the bills, and I don’t owe any money to my record company, but it’s taken a long time on every record for me to pay off my recording costs, so I do this music that I love and would not change, but I have modest sales. (laughs)

MR: Perhaps all that changes with your new album Al Jarreau and The Metropole Orkest Live, with Vince Mendoza conducting.

AJ: Well, here, let’s mention that that orchestra is from Holland from a little town near Amsterdam. It’s an orchestra that’s been in existence for some time now, close to twenty years. I wish I knew how long! Vince Mendoza–Grammy Award-winning conductor and composer himself–invited me to come and record with them, and I’m thrilled. Why I bring it up is that we people from Chicago and New Orleans and St. Louis think of ourselves as the jazz capitals of the world. Well I’ve got news for you…wait until you see Paris! Wait until you see Amsterdam! There’s a festival in Amsterdam that every great jazz player goes to every year. It sits on fifty acres. You can walk from venue to venue and hear everybody from Herbie Hancock and Chick Corea to blues artists who are doing gut bucket blues right off of the delta at that festival because there’s an audience for it. I envy that as an American. We’ve surrendered that part of ourselves and outsourced it. Other countries have accepted it, and it’s doing well. We’d be in trouble, we jazzers, if it wasn’t for France and Germany and Holland and Switzerland…and all kinds of European countries that have fallen in love with jazz in the deepest sense and understand what it is, care about it and recognize it as high art. I’m preaching again. (laughs)

MR: No, not at all, Al, you’re just singing the truth. Hey, what advice do you have for new artists?

AJ: Do it, do it, do it, do it, do it, do it, do it, do it, do it, do it, do it, do it, do it, do it, do it, do it, do it, do it, do it, etc.

MR: (laughs) Al, that is, I think, the best answer I’ve ever gotten.

AJ: I can add to that, but that’s the story. Do it! I don’t care if you’re a painter or a poet or an architect. Do it. It changes you when you love something that much that you do it, do it, do it, do it, do it.

MR: Excellent. Al, I think we have to wrap this up because you’ve got to go do it, do it, do it, do it yourself.

AJ: Well, this was great, I enjoyed talking to you. You made me think in ways that I don’t typically think. You’re doing it…you’re doing it! You’re doing your homework, and you love this work. You love this work, I can tell.

MR: I do, it’s true, and I love your work, Al, almost as much as I like the man.

AJ: Well, great. Thank you for letting me talk to you and your audience.

MR: Absolutely. Thank you very much for all your time.

Transcribed by Kyle Pongan