Editor’s note: Vocalist Al Jarreau, a seven-time Grammy winner, died on Feb. 12, just two days after announcing his retirement from touring. He was 76.
In late 2011, Jarreau, known for his mega-hits “We’re In This Love Together,” “Roof Garden” and the theme song to the television show Moonlighting, performed two shows at the Jorgensen Center for the Performing Arts in Storrs. The following interview was published in the Hartford Advocate in November 2011.
Q: Tell us about the show you are going to put on in Storrs.
A: It will be five others and me on stage. These days, we decided that because, as a matter of fact, I’m meeting people for the first time that it should be a kind of a historical perspective. It’s called the Rainbow Tour, and it’s music that I did around the time of the “Look to the Rainbow” record [a live 1977 album on Warner Bros.], pieces from the very core: “We Got By,” there’s a song called “Sweet Potato Pie” that we are doing again on this tour, a song called “Easy.” A lot of this music is earlier-period music. Then, songs from the middle period, signature pieces.
Q: Your song “Double Face” (with Deodato) is #2 on the Media Guide Jazz Chart, and it’s been on that list for 22 weeks. It’s small-group, intimate kind of venture, just you and a trio, similar to what I imagine the trio with George Duke might sound like if you were around now.
A: The Deodato piece came about when I was in Italy about sixteen months ago. I was in Europe and touring around Europe and I got a call from the Nicolosi brothers who are Italians who are working with Deodato. They asked me if I’d listened to this new piece of music that
they decided they were thinking of me and they called me. Knowing Deodato and thinking, “Wow, what a great combination.” … I did a new lyric for it, went into the studio and recorded it in an afternoon… Guys in the band came and sang on it. It’s out there and people are listening to it. We are just jumping up and down because on today’s radio it’s great to have a piece of music with some real playing and real singing going on… We aren’t going to be doing a lot of rapping and sampling. And raising some eyebrows is eyebrow-raising for us.
Q: You released a new album, which is a collection of songs recorded live in 1965 with George Duke and a trio at the Half Note Club in San Francisco. What’s your fondest memory of those gigs and that time?
A: Live at the Half Note in 1965… I don’t know if that’s going to get a lot of attention on radio but George and I think it’s a nice piece, a nice little snapshot of what we were doing there… I’m sounding like a boy soprano, and George is saying, “I wish there were some chords I hadn’t played.” It’s an interesting, quick peek at what was happening before George went out with Zappa and I did my first record in 1975. We’ve maintained this friendship musically and socially since then and we watch out for each other. We’d love that opportunity to get together to do that music and that attitude and we are able to do updated arrangements of that music AND the music people know us for otherwise. That’s a wonderful thing: to have careers that have the longevity that either one of us have had. I’m actually older than he is, but George started with Cannon [Adderley] and Zappa and was writing with them before my first record.
Q: You were 35 when you signed with Warner Bros. and put out “We Got By” in 1975. By the end of the ’70s you had really hit critical mass with your success. It wasn’t until 1981, when you released “We’re In This Love Together,” that you had a top twenty pop hit (US #15, R&B #6). In the pop world, 41 is a little older than we are used to seeing pop stars. Tell me what it felt like to have achieved pop success at that point in your career.
A: It’s late to be starting in any world, in any career. But in the music world, the emphasis has always been … starting late, I think that saved my ass, so to speak. I think if I had a career when I was 18 or 19, that would have made it 1959 or so, I’d be done and gone by now. People who had careers in those days they are out the door, especially if they were doing music that was considered in any way to be pop. I’m an R&B and pop singer as well as a jazzer. Young pop artists… if I had had a career that early it would be over by now. Maybe if I was a kind of dyed-in-the-wool jazzer at that age… look at Herbie Hancock. He’s still in it and on it. In some respects George Duke had a kind of youthful beginning with Cannonball and with Frank Zappa. But I think being a little older and a little more determined and being a little more evolved in my case and maturity in the kind of music I was doing and how I was doing it really helped to keep me grounded and with an audience that could appreciate what I was doing, who grew with me and evolved with me and kept me alive and around.
Q: Are you aware that there is a dedicated group of Gen-X-ers who grew up with your music in the 1970s and ’80s, who now consider you to be a sort of cult hero?
A: I never used that [Generation X] as a label, but I surely do know that this audience born in the period that you are talking about, especially up until the middle ’80s. That was a very important, special audience for me that had musical sensitivities that were determined by music that was in the pre-rap universe, before the period when hip-hop took over and occupied so much of the airwaves, when it was all that a young person had to listen to. You grew up when it was possible to turn on your radio and television and see other things… That was a very healthy period to grow up in. I think that’s important to me still being around.
Q: You were recently the victim of an Internet hoax, where someone effectively went on Wikipedia and entered in your date of passing away. Did you ever find out about it?
A: I’m a little bit nervous for us with all of this electronically generated new hyper-space that we’ve moved into, where not only people but also economies and systems, like banking, are left to zeros and ones. I want to be more than a zero or one. It’s scary. I think we’ve only begun to see what the dangers are of this whole business. The best defence against that is to be on the scene and do what you do, and you say what you have to say on your own website. But it’s scary from the point of view that those systems are control. I’m not doing online banking. I have a couple of credit cards and I use them sparingly. We have to be really careful. With all of this newer, more international way of doing business, we are at risk. And we really need to take care that our backups are in place.
