MONDAY
E-mail a friendAl Jarreau
airdate December 19, 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."
Multiple Grammy-winning singer performs a track from his new holiday CD. (3:49)
Full interview. (10:14)
Al Jarreau
Tavis: Always pleased to have Al Jarreau on this program. The seven-time Grammy-winning artist is finally - and I do mean finally - out with his first ever Christmas album. The terrific collection of holiday classics includes - I should say, is called "Al Jarreau Christmas" and includes some beautiful stuff.
When I got this, Al, and was told you were gonna come on the show - delighted as always to see you - but this completely threw me off. And it threw me off because, you know, I'm such a huge fan of yours. I think I know your discography pretty well.
Al Jarreau: Indeed you do.
Tavis: And I argue with people. I said, "There's no way in the world that this could be Al's first Christmas record" because every Christmas season, your version of "This Christmas" is my favorite and they wear it out on the radio all over the place. I'm like it can't be his first record.
Jarreau: Yeah. "Chestnuts roasting. . ." There's goes Al. Was that Al or Nat Cole (laughter)?
Tavis: (Laughter) No. Nat's a bad boy, but yours is very distinctive. So I'm thinking, I know I hear that song every holiday season. I said, "How can this be his first album?" But it is.
Jarreau: Don't ask me that, okay? Because I haven't come up with an answer that makes any sense yet (laughter).
Tavis: It's on here, your version of it, "This Christmas," but how did that first come out then if it wasn't on an album?
Jarreau: Well, no, it was a single.
Tavis: It's a single, okay.
Jarreau: "Chestnuts roasting on an open fire" and I did that with Jay Graydon who produced a lot of very important work for me. In the middle 80s, I was driving on the freeway coming - not in the pink Cadillac (laughter) - in my car. I had this idea. It was long around October or something and I called Jay on the phone and I said, "Let's go. Let's get a group together and let's record "The Christmas Song." I said, "Here's the idea." [Singing]
Tavis: I love the song, man. I love it. I hear it every year. You record a song in the mid-80s. That becomes a huge hit for you. It's a wonderful classic they play every season and you just now figured out that maybe you should do a Christmas album?
Jarreau: No. I've known all along that I should do a Christmas album and this is not a very satisfying answer. But the tendency is to think, "I can do that anytime, you know. I have this that I have to do now, this record that is due in order to keep up with what is expected in terms of a schedule of releases and all of that. The Christmas record will be an off-season project and I can do that anytime."
It just kept being "I can do that anytime" until a great opportunity came along when I started doing some work with Rhino. You know, they [unintelligible]. Their interest as a project is what just got us all going.
Tavis: Let me ask you a strange question. I don't mean to disrespect you because your talent is so immense and so awesome. When you hold a project for this long even though you have other stuff in front of it, when you hold a project like this for this long, are there things that you can't do? It's a strange question for you. Things you can't do, cannot do, with your voice now that you could have done on this record 20 years ago, had you done this back in the 80s?
Jarreau: Oh, we've talked about this before. The voice changes, Tavis, you know. I mean, I got miles on it. I won't tell you how many miles (laughter).
Tavis: You got on that throat, yeah.
Jarreau: I got miles on this throat. Yeah, the voice does change. I'm always amazed at guys like Stevie and George Benson who continue to have that high register, almost soprano. Maybe it's because I'm a more natural. I'm between a bass and a baritone really. I push my throat and get a lot out of it and I think that adds miles to things. So, yes, you're quite right. You're right on target with that as question. Yeah, there are things that I'm not doing. I was a boy soprano almost (laughter).
Tavis: Your version of "This Christmas," as I said already in this conversation, is so uniquely different. The minute you hear it, you know it's Al Jarreau. How do you go about approaching not just any song, but Christmas songs that we all know and love so much? How do you approach those and give those, after all these years, the Al Jarreau treatment?
Jarreau: You know what? I was saved almost by something that came so naturally that it didn't occur to me as that might be the approach. As soon as my band knew that I was seriously gonna do a Christmas record, several people said, "I got the one."
Tavis: I got an arrangement for you.
Jarreau: "I got the one." And when your band - these are people who've been with you for ten years, fifteen years. When they start suggesting things, some "Duh" goes away (laughter) and you get smart and you say, "Please, Larry, come on. Tell me what you have in mind. Please, Joe Turano, tell me what you have in mind. Please, Chris Walker, tell me what you have in mind." They showed me things that just were so spot on that - remember we talk all the time about the thumb print?
Tavis: The thumb print on your throat.
Jarreau: Thumb print in your throat.
Tavis: I've used that line so many times.
Jarreau: Man, they knew the thumb print, Al Jarreau thumb print, and helped me do that and did it in such a way that it helped me keep the reverence. That was the important thing, to let Al come through, but keep the reverence for this great music that is so traditionally appreciated, but just put a little Jarreau English on it, so there's the thumb print.
Tavis: I should explain this for those who watch this program regularly, and I hope that's you. For those who watch regularly, I used this line all the time. I've said it so many times that I've probably gotten to the point now where I may have stopped Al Jarreau's attribution. Don't tell him I said that.
But Al and I in a conversation one time, I was asking him how he discovered his own voice, how he found his own voice, how he came upon his own unique style because, when you hear his voice, you know it's Al Jarreau, of course, no matter what he's singing.
He said to me, "As surely as we have thumb prints on our hands that make us uniquely different from anybody else in the world, dead, living or unborn, we each have also a thumb print on our throats and each of us has to find our own voice, whatever your voice is." We're not talking here just about singing. Whatever your voice is, you got to find it. Man, I'm not a preacher, but I could preach a sermon on that, man, about finding your own voice.
Jarreau: (Laughter) Finding your own voice.
Tavis: I remember that.
Jarreau: You've done it in a way that nobody's done it. God bless you. Continue this work, this mission -
Tavis: - ministry.
Jarreau: Ministry. That's what I'm trying to say.
Tavis: That's what yours is, and each of us have one. We each have a ministry, no matter what it is. Before you go and sing for me, which I got to get out of the way for you to do, you have one or two Christmas favorites? I mean, I love "This Christmas." I love your version of "The Christmas Song." What turns you on at Christmastime? Whether your version or somebody else's, what Christmas songs do you really like?
Jarreau: There's a batch of them written by - oh, please help me out here now. The Alfred Burt carols. One of them is [singing] and [singing]. These are written in such a classic style, but they're fresh. Written in the 40s and 50s. I got introduced to those songs when I was in high school. It made my Christmas spirit blossom and I would love to do some of those. That's why I just sang you a couple that I like a lot.
Tavis: See, Al Jarreau's like Elvis Presley. He just sings his dialogue (laughter). You ask him a question and he starts singing the answer, and that's why he's Al Jarreau and that's why we are so grateful and indeed blessed that he has finally - maybe 20 years late - but finally gotten around to adding something else to his version of "The Christmas Song." A whole new CD of "Al Jarreau Christmas" and it's just called "Al Jarreau Christmas." Up next, Al sings the holiday classic, "Winter Wonderland." Stay with us.
From his terrific new Christmas album, here is Al Jarreau singing the holiday classic, "Winter Wonderland." Enjoy, happy holidays from all of us and, as always, keep the faith.
[Performance]
Back to December 19, 2008