Zitat des Tages von Al Jarreau:
Learn it well in your head, know it well, pick things you know and bring the old you and all the experience you have from singing these various kinds of feelings that are still related to what I have done in the rest of my career.
Every good gospel singer you can hear is a scat singer; they're just using different syllables. There are a lot of jazz singers out there, and more coming out of the churches.
Since the beginning of my recording career in 1975, I have had a little difficulty because the pop stations think I'm a jazzer who doesn't have a feeling for pop, so it's hard to get my records played. Similarly, black urban radio doesn't understand that with my R&B roots, I am more than a jazz singer. So I get pigeonholed.
I want to give the audience the whole package, and for me, the whole package is to give them something fresh as well. It's not as much fun resting on your laurels.
I love connecting with the audience, and there's more ways than one to do that.
More live recording. I have missed the boat over my career by not doing every second or third CD live because things happen onstage that don't happen in the studio.
I still have a pretty lively audience in German and across Europe. And I continue to say, 'Thank you, God,' for making me smart enough to avoid getting hit by trucks and going out and finding myself an audience abroad. Which includes Asia - from Jakarta to Japan. Working hard at finding an audience abroad.
I've thought about doing it as soon as it is possible with this new CD getting some wings and getting out there. I don't know how soon that will be.
These songs are old friends I have entertained myself with when I'm washing the dishes, driving to the store and walking down the aisles. The ones that you sing when you're driving in the car and as a singer you always go back to them.
I have been with the record company and Tommy was there doing records with other people.
My mother and father come from that post-Depression, middle-of-World-War -I kind of thinking that says, 'Find a practical job. You know what I mean, Mr. Big Shot? So, you can sing a song ...'
I've been saying for almost 20 years that I need to do a jazz project and it ought to be either big band or I should do some jazz songs with a trio or quartet.
I love Sly Stone and James Brown and Stevie Wonder, and I want my music to reflect some of that.
Jazz should be recognized as music of the people, based in a lot of accents and melodies. What is jazz but music that people danced to? Jazz has the dynamic thing. I don't think you have to be playing only Charlie Parker licks on your horn or whatever the new version of that is.
I came along with that crowd of singer-songwriters who were able to make their own statements in such a personal way that it changed the industry: Laura Nyro, Joni Mitchell, Bob Dylan, Sly and the Family Stone.
We are just fanatics about using the technology to make it all wonderful. We laughed at the fact that we were having such a great time working this way.
That's the way I try to live. I think it's the only way for human beings at this point in our evolution as souls, where everyone in their lifetime is going through stuff.
Al and Tommy and I sharing the biggest laugh because it was predicted by everything we did in the first three or four records in my career. It was predicted in the grooves that we would be here sometime later on down the road.
My eyes went blank, and I stared off, and the music started. It was raining, and the sun was shining at the same time, and there were these big bay windows, and there was the blue in the sky, and the sun on the trees, and it was drizzling.
I grew up the son of a Seventh Day Adventist minister, so I was really close to the church and sang church music between sips at my bottle, you know? I sat on the piano bench next to my mother. She was the church organist, so that music is deeply inside of me.
I really do see it as the start of the second half of my career.
I'm touched by the Beatles. I want some of the music I do to reflect that. Here I am. I love Sly Stone and James Brown and Stevie Wonder, and I want my music to reflect some of that. Here I am. I'm touched by Jon Hendricks. I want some of my music to reflect that. And when I write, you're going to hear it.
I am a distance runner, a marathoner... literally and figuratively.
Obviously given good health, and a continuing audience and a record company that allows me to do music. So given those things yes, I'm introducing some new music that people haven't really heard me do in quite this fashion.
I say what's on my mind and have a good time. I try to give people a show. It's all about giving people a good time once you get out under those lights.
There's a wonderful tradition of jazz people getting on stage and jamming and finding some feeling for music with audiences who may be fresh. For others, it might be just like a comfortable shirt they've been wearing.
That's Tommy, this great producer who comes in contact with people and must have a mental library of personnel who are great for this and great for that, and he brought this whole group of musicians to the project that I'd never worked with before.
I tour a lot and interview a lot. I'm on the Internet and doing stuff. I go out and promote. I've got a bass drum and a sandwich sign and a washboard. You just have to shout louder and louder that you're still alive.
I was really learning my craft as a jazz singer and working with some great players and all, really growing and feeling my wings.
Music - special magic that communicates feelings and sensitivities that are human and what is so wonderful about the art. Let your kids get involved in the arts and study this workshop of human sensitivities, sadness, joy, happiness and aware of sadness and joy and happiness in their lives.
I'm not sure it's a better music world of appreciation and performance. I think the listener is a different guy, and listening is something he does in passing, with other stuff going on. There's less care and understanding of the relationship between the song and the listener.
I don't know where we got the notion that God wants us to suffer. Every living thing tends toward the good or we would have been gone a long time ago.
I work 'cause I have to pay the bills. But I also work 'cause I love it. I don't know what I'd do with me if I didn't have this work. It's what I've done all my life. It's my motivation. It's my satisfaction. It's my joy to stand in front of an audience to sing, to come back home and write songs. Man, it's amazing for me.
You know, I think in some kinds of ways, we are all born into stuff that gives us no choice.
It is a very serious consideration for a lyricist to step in there and suggest the meaning to a song. The music is speaking for itself.
I am inspired by all kinds of players and singers.
