EARWORTHY. - Review - sound recording review

American Visions, April, 2000 by T. Brooks Shepard

Undoubtedly, Al Jarreau is back. Not that he ever went away; you could hear him all over the radio. The tunes we associate with him--"Breakin' Away," "Look to the Rainbow," "Blue Rondo a la Turk"--are today elemental in the repertoire of the modern jazz vocalist and are perennial broadcast favorites

But betchu didn't know that Tomorrow Today (GRP/Verve) is Jarreau's first album in five years. That's eons in the world of popular music. Five years without something new from Jarreau is 20 musical seasons without new songs from the voice of one of the world's most talented artists. "I kept writing and found myself working as much as I've ever worked without an album project," Jarreau said recently.

Can an artist be off the recording scene for five years and come back hittin'? The answer: Once proto-, now archetype, Al Jarreau is funky as he wanna be. A five-time Grammy winner who earned acclaim for We Got By (Reprise) in 1975, Jarreau has one platinum and four gold records hanging on the wall. He knows how to produce hits, and Tomorrow Today is no exception.

Steeped in blues, jazz, rhythm and blues, and Latin sounds, Tomorrow Today is a stunning success--a serious and warm, eminently danceable CD. Part lament, part rhythmic exhortation, the mambo title tune expresses an oh-so-needed and -welcome concern for humanity.

Can we have some more of that? Feel the voodoo, the hoodoo, the Sly: Jarreau has everything in motion with a subtle, rhythmic ferocity supercharged on the down low in the tune "In My Music."

And it gets even better--if you can belee dat. On "Through It All," Jarreau is master of harmonic flow. Listen to "Flame," with his inimitable jazz vocalese; the anthemic duet "God's Gift to the World," with Vanessa Williams; "Something That You Said," a lyrical interpretation of Weather Report's instrumental "A Remark You Made"; and the Barry Eastmond-produced "It's How You Say It": all are resplendent examples of the contemporary art song.

Truly, there will only ever be one Al Jarreau. The rest will always be merely like Al Jarreau, or, maybe, Jarreauesque.

There's a 50-track, three-CD Isley Brothers boxed set out there called It's Your Thing: The Story of the Isley Brothers (Epic/Legacy). Chronicling the recording career of this family from Lincoln Heights, Ohio, from 1957 to 1996, It's Your Thing has all of your Isley Brothers favorites, with a more-than-pleasant surprise--Jimi Hendrix.

In 1963 the Isleys needed a guitarist, and they went looking uptown for a player they had heard about. When O'Kelly Isley (who died in 1986) caught up with Hendrix, in Harlem's Hotel Theresa, Hendrix had pawned his guitar. When O'Kelly redeemed the guitar, it had no strings. And after O'Kelly had bought the strings, he discovered that Jimi had no place to live.

"So my brothers take him home," guitarist Emie Isley recounted in an interview in the liner notes. "All this trouble, and they haven't heard the first note. Then he begins to play. Jimi was the star of the band before the first rehearsal was over. Kelly said, `Mom, this is our new guitarist.' And Jimi just moved in, like a member of the family."

Hendrix played with the band from 1963 to '65, and he is featured on "Testify," recorded in '64, and "Move Over and Let Me Dance," recorded in '65.

Entrepreneurs who were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1992, the Isleys recorded most of their major hits for their own label, T-Neck. "Fight the Power," "Caravan of Love," "The Pride," "Take Me to the Next Phase" and "Don't Say Goodnight"--all songs that went No. 1--were all recorded for T-Neck.

Buoyed and propelled by the smooth falsetto of Ronnie, the Isley Brothers band, with Rudolph and O'Kelly singing background, was a hard driving, contemporary rhythm-and-blues juggernaut. Its contribution to the advancement of late 20th-century American music can't be measured.

T. Brooks Shepard is a writer in Boston.