Al Jarreau has died. That was the headline notification that came across my iPhone and the news left me stunned. I am not alone, of course. The music legend’s death on Feb. 12 sparked widespread surprise and finds family, friends, and fans mourning the great loss.
Jarreau died Sunday morning at the age of 76. Earlier in the week, the legendary performer had been hospitalized in Los Angeles "due to exhaustion," according to updates on his Facebook page.
As a longtime interviewer of performers in the entertainment industry, it’s hard not to taken aback when I hear about the passing of somebody I once had the privilege of interviewing—and actually had a candid conversation with. I was shaken when Joan Rivers passed away several years ago, and sucker-punched upon hearing the news that Debbie Reynolds had died just a day after her daughter, Carrie Fisher’s passing in late December.
Jarreau was in the forefront of my mind because I had interviewed the talented Grammy-winner for a piece I was doing for Canada South Magazine several weeks ago. He was to perform in a gala with the Desert Symphony in Palm Desert, Calif., in April. Earlier this week, when news hit that he had suddenly had to cancel out of the event, I wondered how bad his health really was.
When Jarreau and I connected, one of the first things he did was break out into a rendition of the Charlie Chaplin song “Smile” (from “Modern Times”). In between crooning, “Smile, though your heart if aching, smile, even though it’s breaking ...” it felt as if I was in the presence of a modern sage. Why? Well, there seemed to be a rare genuineness to the man and it shined through.
“The key to survival is to find things to celebrate,” he told me. “To laugh, to dance and to feel good. And to smile.”
Jarreau made a lot of people smile, actually. After hitting jazz clubs in San Francisco and Los Angeles in the late 1960s and ‘70s, he eventually caught the attention of Warner Bros. music and found himself spiraling up creatively. He went on to garner seven Grammy Awards and worldwide acclaim along the way—this, after the phenomenal success in the 1970s and 1980s, particularly with the hits “We’re In This Love Together,” "Breakin' Away,” and “Teach Me Tonight.” Others may also recall his memorable theme song for the ’80s hit TV show “Moonlighting.”
To date, Jarreau’s quintessential contemporary jazz offerings have made their way onto more than two dozen albums and he is the first vocalist in music history to receive Grammy Awards in three separate categories—jazz, pop and R&B. He continued to tour internationally for some time, something which he said he was proud of, and here, in what was one of his final interviews with the press, he opens up about what mattered most—and what kept him forever motivated.
Greg Archer: Lucky to be on the receiving end of your serenade, which is a perfect opportunity to ask: What do you love most about what you do?
Al Jarreau: Oh man … it’s all the stuff that is involved intrinsically, of the doing of it. Doing the work. You have to understand, one of the most enjoyable things for me in the world is standing there with the band or orchestra … and singing music with and for the people. The more often it is with people, the more joyous it is. It’s sharing that moment of humanity—of sameness, and of laughter, and of fun. That’s the real deal. Looking at them having a good time.
That sounds rewarding.
That interaction with the audience is the most thrilling part of it all. I love the writing of the music of it, too. The activity of creating something from where there was nothing before. There’s nothing quite like it. We are part of a thing that is almost beyond description in terms of what it does for your morale and spirit, and how good you can feel.
Do you feel that music found you, or that you found music?
Without thinking about it a lot, I would say, music found me. I’ve been doing it so long, that I have a sense of it coming to me, and I just opened up and said, ‘Yes, I love you. I love you Miss Music,’ and went with it. Maybe in the end, anyone who came to find music and responds to it, and ends up doing it … maybe they didn’t find it so much as they … Well, that there was a chord that they became one with inside of them, and it resounds when its stuck by the great instrument player—God, and its music.
There’s something in you that responds to it. I think we all come here with some degree of it or another. I came with a lot of it in me. Much of what I do is not been because I studied formally, but because I loved it and studied it and pursued it, after it found me.
Were you surprised with your success in the ’70s and everything that followed?
There was a bit of surprise. I was swimming upstream. Last fall, I received a couple of awards [Lifetime Achievement Award from the Wisconsin Foundation for School Music], which makes me review what had gone on in my life. I had to realize, I was doing music that was counter to the music culture. Because, at the time, it was very serious rock ’n’ roll. It was pervasive. It was the music of a new generation, certainly as much as any generation felt that it was their music.
It was really deep, too. And I was nothing like them. I am a preacher’s kid—a P.K. Man, I didn’t have my first sip of booze until I was 28. It was a differently world for me, musically, too. In some ways, there was a kind of joyous surprise, because I knew what I was fighting against. I had knocked on every record company door here in Los Angeles, taking my music to them with a demo tape I did with a guitar player at the time.
You went to New York after that with acoustic guitarist Julio Martinez and then returned to L.A. though.
Yes. I approached record companies again with music that the group and I were writing. And there was no response to that for a while either. I continued to do music with jazzy influences, but except for Sergio Mendez and Brasil 65, nobody knew anything about Brazilian music in America, and wasn’t very interested. I was alarmed at the disinterest. I knew back then that I was not the same culture as the music going on the time—The Grateful Dead, Janis Joplin, Jefferson Airplane, Country Joe and the Fish. That music was serious rock ‘n’ roll.
What you think of how the music industry has evolved over the decades?
I am not sure I can say it in an afternoon. [Laughs] There have been so many changes and I am not so sure they have been so good for “music” per se. I think some of the new changes have had the effect of taking something away from the heart and soul of the music, and the artistry in the music … in that a lot of the music we enjoy, is not made by people. It’s manufactured with “stuff.” We don’t listen to music the way we used to. Music doesn’t have the same place in the ears and hearts of the potential audience out there. There are lots of people around who still listen that way, but they are surrounded by people who don’t listen that way.
I don’t feel the same saturation in the culture of music now that once had the effect of changing who you were.
What was it like growing up in Midwest?
I wish you’d been there. It was the Midwest and the time period. The Midwest tends to hang on to who they have been in ideals and thoughts and motivations, so a lot of it remains. It’s very friendly. And I was in a church family. For me, it was close to being idyllic. I have in my mind, golden times—that happens to be the title of that period of growing up in Milwaukee, and as I look back with more mature vision, for me, it was idyllic, and I think it accounts for a lot of the Pollyanna in me. I’m a Pollyanna.
Now, why do you say that?
Because I really do look at the world with some kind of glasses that are tinted gold rose. I think we are really quite special as human beings. We have some serious faults but when we are good, we are fabulous.
Catch up on the icon’s legacy at aljarreau.com.