E-mail a friendAl Jarreau
airdate February 14, 2008
Seven-time Grammy winner Al Jarreau is the only artist to have won the Academy's highest honor in three different categories (jazz, pop and R&B). However, music wasn't always the major force in his life. Jarreau excelled in sports and earned a master's degree in vocational rehabilitation. The Wisconsin native began a career as a rehab counselor in San Francisco, but later gave in to his passion for performing. He recently completed a European tour and has a new holiday project, "Al Jarreau Christmas."
Singer-songwriter discusses his new album "Love Songs." (1:07)
Al Jarreau
Tavis: I'm pleased to welcome my friend Al Jarreau back to this program, and I say that unapologetically. The seven-time Grammy-winning singer is out with a new CD featuring some of his favorite songs. The disc is called "Love Songs," I think an appropriate title for this Valentine's Day. He is currently touring the U.S. in support of the new CD. Al Jarreau, Happy Valentine's Day.
Al Jarreau: Happy Valentine's Day. Come on, give me a hug. (Laughter)
Tavis: All right, all right. All right, all right. (Laughter) How you been, man?
Jarreau: (Laughs) Oh, I'm doing good, man.
Tavis: I owe you a big thank you. I owe you a big thank you.
Jarreau: Why, why, why?
Tavis: Because we are, as you may know, celebrating our fifth season here on PBS, and for those who did not see the very first night of our show, I was blessed on this show the very first night five years ago by this guy right here.
Jarreau: I was very scared for you. (Laughter) Doesn't he know?
Tavis: Well thanks to you we're still here five years later.
Jarreau: Well, I love it and you continue to be just brilliant, Tavis. Don't stop. Tavis for president. But I know you can't -
Tavis: Don't tell Obama. (Laughter)
Jarreau: Well we need you to comment on what they're doing, but you'd get my vote.
Tavis: What do you make of what they are - and I'm not trying to get you to take sides - what do you make of what they are doing in this campaign?
Jarreau: I haven't kept track enough, but either way I think it's going to be a win for America. I think it'll send a great message to the world that America is moving away from its direction of the last eight years if we put a woman in the White House or if we put a person of color in the White House. I think we'll send a great message to the world that America is taking a good look at itself.
There was an interesting comment that Billy Dee shared with me a few days ago - we were having dinner, we'd been promising each other we were going to do that for a long time. Billy Dee said, "You know, Al, a woman will bring something that men can't bring. When you've had a child and you've grown a child in your stomach, you bring something to the table that a man just cannot bring."
We were just talking in general, and that was the comment that he made, and I went "You're absolutely right." You think about your kids and where you're sending them if you're a woman, and so very interesting.
Tavis: You travel the world, certainly more than I do. I get out there, but you're on tour all the time and loved all over the world. Before I move on to the CD and some lovely conversation, what's your sense of how we are viewed in the world today? To your earlier point that it sends a message to the world that we're changing direction, because every time I travel outside the country it breaks my heart, personally, for people to think X, Y, or Z about the United States because of who's in the White House.
Jarreau: Yes. Yeah. My heart's broken. In just a few words, my heart's broken. We've lost some ground. We've lost some respect. We've lost some stature and some good will and to have supported the kind of thinking that got us there twice, in two elections - shouldn't have even been close the second time around.
But I really want us to recover from that. We need to recover from that. Even during our best times, we're not always right. But I think most of the time our heart had been in the right place and we've just seen something else happen that is not quite who we are.
Tavis: Maybe, Al Jarreau, the solution to this whole mess is a CD of love songs by Al Jarreau. (Laughter) Maybe -
Jarreau: I love that. I love that.
Tavis: Maybe that's the solution. What the world needs -
Jarreau: Is love, sweet, love.
Tavis: - is love, sweet, love. (Laughter) Tell me about this new CD, "Love Songs."
Jarreau: "Love Songs." Well first of all, I'm late. I'm late with that. It should have come a long time ago. It's a wonderful thing when people request you to sing love songs because you say something in a love song that makes them feel this wonderful, warm passion that is maybe the most important thing that we've been given, is this love, this need to be cared for, and this willingness to care for something.
Like God is love, he gave us everything that we need because he loves us so much. And if you can bring that to people and that's what they ask for, I want to be able to sing dance songs too, but (laughs) maybe it's the love song. This compilation happened actually six or seven years ago. This is Susan's work. She put this together as an Al Jarreau Valentine's gift, and all I did was add a few songs since six years ago when she put this collection together.
Tavis: When you look at this CD, and being such a huge fan of Al Jarreau, I know this and for Al Jarreau fans, you know this as well, you could do an Al Jarreau box set just on your love songs. I don't mean your whole discography. An Al Jarreau box set just on your love songs. So how do you go about choosing the ones that make the "Love Songs" CD? You ain't got but 14 of them on here.
Jarreau: I'll ask my wife Sue to help me. (Laughter)
Tavis: So hey Susan, how'd you do this? (Laughter) But she picked some good ones, though.
Jarreau: Oh, yeah.
Tavis: Track number one, "We're In This Love Together."
Jarreau: "We're In This Love Together."
Tavis: I don't want to color this question. How does that rank amongst the requests you get when you're on the road?
Jarreau: We do it every night.
Tavis: Every night. See, I figured as much.
Jarreau: Stegall and Murrah, those were the writers - Stegall and Murrah. They sent it to my manager's office and Jay Graydon and I - that was a producer at the time, in 1984. I'm only 50 years old, y'all. (Laughter) And it came in the mail and Jerry Levin, one of the guys in the office at that time, called me on the phone and said, "Al, you have to hear this song."
And Jay and I were going in the studio that night and I listened to the song, Jay listened to the song. We stopped what we were doing and put that song together and started recording it that night. That's how important we felt it was, and I do it every night.
Tavis: I was in my house the other day, listening to XM satellite radio. We just bounce around the house doing stuff. And the major control of my system is downstairs in my library and I happened to be upstairs, but it plays throughout the house. An Al Jarreau song came on that's on this CD, I almost broke my neck running down the steps (laughter) - these wooden steps, I almost slipped and busted my behind - to get to my master control to crank this thing up so that my neighbors could hear it. Your cover of "So Good" is so good. And the lyric on that song is cold, isn't it? There's no greater sin -
Jarreau: Than missing your chance when it's staring right at you. (Laughter)
Tavis: No greater crime than wasting your time on a boat going nowhere.
Jarreau: On a boat going nowhere. That's some great writing, isn't it?
Tavis: That's a cold line, right there.
Jarreau: That's some great writing.
Tavis: But your treatment of it, though, is beautiful.
Jarreau: Yes, but you bring up such an interesting thing. To look outside of yourself for great music, because there's some great music being written every day, great music that was written in the past on the CD just before this. I did a couple of songs, one called "Waltz for Debbie." Maybe Bill Evans is the writer, "Waltz for Debbie" and "My Foolish Heart."
Those songs changed my life when I heard those songs played by a piano player who had to be in love with Erik Satie from the 19th century French guy. (Laughter) But Bill Evans was one of the great jazz piano players, changed my life. And so I wanted to bring those things to people so maybe they'll go find Bill Evans.
Tavis: There are a couple of things before my time runs out, I got about two minutes here. There are, as you mentioned earlier, a couple of things that you've added to this CD over the last six or seven years since Susan started this project. Of those three or four things you've added, which one do you really, really, really like?
Jarreau: "Heaven and Earth" I really, really love, and "Through It All." I insisted that that one be on there. And let me see - let me just look - "Foolish Heart" isn't on here, is it?
Tavis: "Foolish Heart" is -
Jarreau: Yes it is.
Tavis: Yes it is.
Jarreau: "My Foolish Heart," yeah. That's the -
Tavis: "Heaven and Earth" is track number seven.
Jarreau: Yeah. Those were things that I want people to hear.
Tavis: You insisted and it was kind of Susan to let you do it.
Jarreau: Yeah. (Laughter) That's right. You got it right.
Tavis: Thank you, Susan, for letting Al put that one track on here. This is a wonderful compilation.
Jarreau: Thank you.
Tavis: That's an overstatement because anything that Al Jarreau does is wonderful. But you can't do much better than an Al Jarreau CD of love songs, and so it is out, seven years late but just in time for Valentine's Day 2008, at least. (Laughter) Al Jarreau, "Love Songs." What a voice. You know what's amazing about your voice - and we all know this - anywhere you are in the world, anything you are doing at any point in time, if you sing one or two licks, just one or two bars, we know it's Al Jarreau. And I guess you're okay with that.
Jarreau: Oh, I am okay with that; that is so wonderful to be recognized like that. It reminds me of classic people like Nat Cole or Sarah Vaughn. You hear a line and you know that voice. If I could be recognized like that, thank you, God. (Laughs)
Tavis: It is Valentine's Day, and not quite like Susan, but I love you and I'm glad to have you here.
Jarreau: Oh, bless your heart. Thank you.
Tavis: Thank you, Al. (Laughter)
Back to February 14, 2008