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Chicago Urban League Gala

Last Saturday we capped off a wonderful week on the road with a visit to Chicago to perform at the Chicago Urban League’s Annual Gala. It was a huge room decorated with the most beautiful golds and deep reds and softly shifting mood lighting—and just filled with people dressed to the nines, all there to celebrate and support the work of the Urban League. The event was hosted by Angela Bassett, whom I’d met only once before, while we were both sitting on the aluminum bench outside of LAX waiting for rides years ago. We saw each other again on Saturday and exchanged friendly hellos and again that memory—What a sweetheart, it was great to see her again.

I told the Urban League’s CEO and President Angela Zopp before the show something that I was moved to share several times with the audience from the stage: “Urban League—I know you. And I owe you.” And that’s the truth. I grew up in Milwaukee, a short paddle up the coast of Lake Michigan from Chicago, and the Milwaukee Urban League played a great part in my childhood. I used to play in Lapham Park, which was right there on ninth street by Vine, surrounded by a group of public buildings, including the library, which had a great basketball court, and the junior high school where all of my older brothers and sisters attended. On the other corner was Ninth Street Elementary School. Just behind the library 50 yards away is Roosevelt Junior High School. Right in the middle of all those public buildings, so important to the community, was the Milwaukee Urban League—Yeah. I know you, and I owe you. I passed that building every time I went to my church, which was several times a week.

A great big parenthesis: If this gets said, it’s not often enough. There was a time when each city’s community of African Americans/Black People shared a neighborhood that was smallish and centralized. The laborer in the steel mill lived around the corner from the attorney, and down the street from a surgeon, and the husband and wife renting the flat upstairs were both teachers: One at the university, and one at the high school. What a powerful impact on the neighborhood. Amazingly, the growth of suburbia, urban development, and CIVIL RIGHTS may have had an unexpected side effect in the dismantling of an amazing institution called the Hood. And in that respect, any ‘Hood,’ Irish, Italian, German, et cetera et cetera, is a truly wonderful place that may be lost and gone forever as we assimilate into the general culture, so that now the general culture, the broader ‘Hood,’ must take us under its wings and provide us those broader familial teachings and learnings, encouragements and examples that we desperately need. I’ll stop here.

I very much enjoyed seeing the crowd in Chicago. Singing songs like We Got By and We’re In This Love Together, songs they’d heard me sing a Bajillion times, but THIS TIME, I was standing there in front of them, and they were singing right along. That’s magic. I got to be a part of their community for that night. Thank you, Urban League, for inviting me to be a part of your special evening. I’m flattered and honored.

Love, Al

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U.S. Air Force Airmen of Note, Washington D.C.

I woke up at 7am after a wonderfully exhilarating and sparkling night with The Airmen of Note. They are a big band jazz group from the U.S. Air Force. Right now I’m on a really early morning flight to Chicago and the fact is that I’m refreshed, uplifted, touched, and stimulated… After three days of pretty intense rehearsing and performing, and here I go to a fourth day. Guess what—I’m not tired, but stoked. (All before 11am!) I was touched by an angel.

I won’t start to do the long role call of the players in the band and people to thank because they have special names like 11th Wing Commander Colonel Kenneth Rizer and Technical Sargeant Joe Jackson, Musical Director of the Airmen of Note. And President Knapp of The George Washington University. Lots of titles.

Maybe it was all about these people who serve and people being of service that touched me. I think it must be right after the First Commandment of “Thou shall not have any other gods before me” that there is a Commandment about helping each other. Commandment 1a. Sometimes the years can make people a little cynical and ‘just old hat’ and ‘been there before’ and ‘blah blah blah’ in thinking. But when you stare the tear filled eyes of sincerity in the face, you’ll know it, and something will be different.

It’s an 18-piece jazz band with soloists as good as it gets anywhere plus four background singers and a down-front featured vocalist who sent me home talkin’ to myself. She sang jazz and scat licks with Ella, and the next moment was standing right there alongside Aretha Franklin doing gospel licks. (Hi, Paige!)… AND she LOADS OUT after the gig.

Washington, DC turned up at Lisner Hall on the campus of George Washington University and their shouting and applauding welcome from the very first note really set the tone.

After our second rehearsal, I sat down with Joe Jackson (Director of ‘Air’) for an interview with Dick Golden (journalist, radio host, musical aficionado, and historian). It became one of the most beautiful ‘human-being conversations’ I’ve ever had. I hope someone is doing a story about Dick Golden. He really gets it. In all its length and breadth, and implications, and derivations. It was special. Thank you Dick and Joe.

The big band did special arrangements of Sticky Wicket, So Good, Jacaranda Bougainvillea, Spain, Teach Me Tonight, Boogie Down, and Mornin’. It was a new listen for anyone who came. And the performance and interview will be distributed to over 800 media outlets for broadcast in Spring 2011. Get ready! Colonel Rizer presented me with a trophy and a framed photo, and a medal, commemorating the whole occasion.

Thanks to everyone whose hard work made this event work so well.

Love, Al — Goin’ to Chicago!

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Al in Milwaukee

I’m back. The Marcus Corporation, Steve Marcus, and son Greg, invited me to come celebrate their 75th anniversary, and sing at their black tie gala. I was 22 years old when Papa Ben Marcus, founder of the corporation, hired me to sing in their lobby lounge. The marquee outside advertised, “Singing Psychologist Al Jarreau.” I was still a student studying rehabilitation at State University of Iowa.

Get a load of this—Ben Marcus’ first corporate venture was to buy and operate the Campus Theatre-Ripon, Wisconsin, in 1935. As a student at Ripon, I was often in that theatre between 1958 and 1962, and had no idea of Papa Ben’s relationship to Ripon when I worked for him between ’62 and ’64. He has always been a major financial donor to the college, none more important…. I didn’t discover this until 13 years and 11 albums into my career. Surprise! There we were on the same rostrum receiving honorary degrees and it blew my mind to make the above discovery. During those days, I saw and interacted with Steve Marcus (we’re around the same age), who was already very active at the Pfister Hotel and the corporation in Milwaukee. Today there are 19 hotels and resorts, and 55 theaters with 684 screens around the world- Way bigger than the Campus Theatre in Ripon… It is still going.

Many of the dignitaries at the gala have attended inaugural balls in Washington, DC. The gala raised a check for $75,000 each to United Way and United Performing Arts Fund. They even made a wonderful donation to the Tom Cheeks Scholarship Fund, one of my pet projects.

At the end of the dinner and presentations, the band and I—you know the guys—did a 50 minute burn that I would describe as one of the most intense and delightful performances of my life. It was ‘the zone’ where time slows down to the point where you can reach out and move the pieces on the chessboard at will and in slow motion. Athletes talk about it all the time.

I know they got it, and told me so at the reception. My handwritten letter of thanks to Steve and Greg and the Marcus Corporation included congratulations on building a corporation with thousands of happy employees who understand and live with a couple of great mottos of Papa Ben Marcus: “Our people are our most valuable asset.” And “We do well by doing good.”

I beg you to teach that in our great Universities. AND… I got to see my family and friends from grade school. I was glad to be me this weekend. Thank you everyone

I’ll talk to you after the Airmen of Note Air Force Big Band Extraordinaire event in Washington, DC.

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