Al Jarreau: Shoo be doo and all that

Rip It Up, Issue 3, 1 August 1977, Page 7

Al Jarreau: Shoo be doo and all that

John Malloy

I first saw/heard Al Jcrreau on Grunt Machine one Friday night. There was this guy miming a flute solo while some flautist blew the tune off camera. It wasn’t till thirty seconds into the cut that the truth hit. He was singing it. Not only that, but he sang the first verse in a high, sweet-soul style (a la Al Green), and then hit the first bass note that introduces the chorus right down there with the bass player. I couldn’t believe it. He was so good. Every word came out perfectly phrased by lips more mobile than ever Jagger’s. His control was superb, and he went from restrained and sweet to the raging power of the chorus of “Lock All the Gates” within the same song. He was about the best singer I’d ever seen.

You don't get that good overnight. Al Jarreau was born in Milwaukee, and gained a Master's degree in Psychology from the University of lowa. In 1965, he moved to San Francisco where he was working as a counsellor. For two years he sang with George Dukes’s trio in clubs. In 1968 he moved to Los Angeles where he started doing club gigs with just a guitarist. It was then that he found room to move vocally, "I colored the music with sounds very much like musical instruments.” But his beginnings were the church choir and "street quartets, shoo be doo and all that.

In early 1975, he played the Troubadour in L.A. with Les McCann as the headliner. It was on the last night of the gig that Warner Brothers board chairman, Mo Ostin, saw him. Jarreau s manager, Pat Rains tells it: “Halfway through the first song Mo said, ‘Would you like to make a deal?’ ” He was signed to Warner Brothers the next day. His first album, We Got By, is the kind of record that redefines the genre. It has elements of funk, jazz, cabaret and gospel music, but the net result is something else again. I wouldn’t be caught dead with a cabaret album on the turntable. But fired by Al Jarreau’s imaginative lyrics and ecstatic vocals, a song that would be cabaret material in anyone elses hands, is just simply a good song. He’s got the feel. Looking at him, you get the impression of youth. He’s thirty seven. He’s been there before, and it shows in lyrics that, on one hand reflect a first-

person understanding of poverty, and on the other, carry a sort of gospel mysticism that hints at his roots singing in his father’s church. It takes one hell of a singer/songwriter to get religious feeling into a song and not sound like he's pushing it down your

throat. And his handling of sex in the lyrics can be playful and earthy. Listen mama when you finally walk on in Don't forget to bring along your sweet potato tin When you serve him a slice of your sweet potato sin, girl He won't want pumpkin again.

His second album, Glow, included several versions of other peoples’ songs. It’s not as good as the first, but it’s good. Some of the covers are to my mind bad choices (e.g. Elton’s “Your Song”), but others such as Sly Stone's “Somebody’s Watching You’’, and Leon Russell’s “Rainbow in Your Eyes”, make the originals look weak. And that’s not something that happens a lot to Sly. His own “Hold On Me” is pure Jarreau a choirful of Jarreaus scatting a street-corner doo-wop that can’t be beat. Lately I’ve been soaking in the glow of his latest, a live double called Look to the Rainbow. Live jazz and soul seems to record best in Europe (e.g. Otis Redding Live in Europe), and this is no exception. It’s a set made up of Al’s oldies and newies, and then some other people’s stuff as well.lt’s more jazzy than the studio stuff, which tendsto use a solid funk bottom (courtesy of ace drummer Joe Correro). Look to the Rainbow shows the man’s vocals stretched to their limit scatting, straight singing, playing vocal percussion the lot. Unlike a lot of live rock and roll, which loses in quality what it gains in energy, this record shows a man who has no need to fake it. Simply stated, he's brilliant. Fats Waller once said about jazz, “If you have to ask what it is, don’t mess with it.” While Al Jarreau doesn’t fit neatly into any category, it s notable that Record World named him their top Jazz Vocalist of 1976. Leonard Feather (and he does know about jazz) did the same. I don't know much about jazz and I don’t think you have to. I’m just crazy ’bout the boy.