| Jazz |
Not long ago, I told you about that wonderful album by Al Jarreau, soon to be released on the ACT label, and which you can read about [here]. This time, this album, set to be released on December 6th, takes me back to my own youth. Back in 1976, as I mentioned in a previous article, you learned that Siggi Loch, who was working at Warner at the time and later founded the ACT label, launched Al Jarreau’s career. In 1976, four years before the arrival of local radio stations in France, radio options were quite limited. From memory, that year we were listening to Supertramp, The Rolling Stones, The Who, Santana, and… Al Jarreau, whose music dominated the airwaves, as there were relatively few artists given airtime on national radio. These three groups/artists brought a sense of wonder to me—their music felt like it was from another world, far more interesting than most of the French-speaking artists of the time, with a few exceptions (Leo Ferré, Claude Nougaro, Véronique Sanson, Louis Chedid, Nicolas Peyrac, among others), who were mainly lyric-driven performers.
It goes without saying that rediscovering Al Jarreau’s voice from that era brought me great joy. Back then, no one sang like him; he established a style that we, as music conservatory students, studied with great interest. Calling Al Jarreau a giant is an understatement—he spent his career moving between jazz, pop, and other musical styles, constantly captivating the same audience while drawing in new ones. This album is a newly unearthed live radio recording, discovered by Grammy®-nominated producer Zev Feldman, known as “The Jazz Detective.” It’s a treasure trove of 10 songs. Released as a limited edition two-vinyl set on November 29th for Record Store Day’s Black Friday event, and as a deluxe CD and digital download on December 6th, 2024, via Resonance Records, it captures a Jarreau in full evolution, mesmerizing an audience during a warm Saturday night in August at Washington, D.C.’s intimate and historic Childe Harrold Club. Accompanied by a trio led by his longtime collaborator Tom Canning on keyboards, Jarreau fervently demonstrates in this flawless recording why, in just two more years, he would become an international superstar.
The sound from that time is fully preserved, with deep, round bass and perfectly cleaned tracks that make sense even in digital format, thanks to the quality of the mixing. While the voice is slightly over-compressed—a known issue with Shure SM58 microphones—Al Jarreau’s wide vocal range ensures this flaw is barely noticeable.
“When I first met Al in the early 2000s, I was living in Washington, D.C. at the time, and we struck up a conversation,” recalls Feldman. “He told me that his very first concert there was at a place called the Childe Harold. Well, six months ago, I was at the former operations manager of WHFS Radio’s house, and he had this tape of Al’s first concert in D.C.—professionally recorded, mixed, and mastered. It’s a tour de force! He gives it his all, and the audience is in the palm of his hand. I can’t believe that after all these years, after Al told me about this particular concert, we found this recording—an incredible set of circumstances!”
What’s striking about this album is the sense of closeness to the singer—you can almost feel him right in front of you while listening. That was the magic of Al Jarreau, so connected to his audience, both through his voice and his gaze. As always with Resonance Records, this is a high-quality album and, in my view, a true collector’s item that belongs in our “Essential Albums” category.
Thierry De Clemensat
USA correspondent – Paris-Move and ABS magazine
Editor in chief Bayou Blue Radio, Bayou Blue News
PARIS-MOVE, October 25th 2024
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