'Never Givin' Up' by Kurt Dietrich
“My name is Al Jarreau, I’m from Milwaukee,” the singer announced at the start of a 2016 French documentary on his career, Al Jarreau L’enchanteur. Jarreau enjoyed a remarkable career before his death in 2017, winning seven Grammies for jazz, R&B and pop vocal performance, the first singer to win trophies in all three categories. Although he left for California in 1964 and lived there the rest of his life, Milwaukee was his foundation, the hometown of his imagination. He returned several times to perform, to receive the Lifetime Achievement Award from the Wisconsin Foundation for School Music and to make a 2017 documentary for Wisconsin Public Television, “Al Jarreau: Coming Home.”
Ripon College professor emeritus of music Kurt Dietrich has a special if indirect connection to Jarreau, who graduated from Ripon in 1962. Dietrich’s biography, Never Givin’ Up: The Life and Music of Al Jarreau (Wisconsin Historical Society Press), sets out the character of his subject and his genre-straddling music. But in early chapters, Never Givin’ Up also paints an endearing picture of Milwaukee as it once was.
Jarreau was born in 1940 to middle-class Black parents in a Milwaukee district known now as Halyard Park. Next door to the family home at 336 W. Reservoir Avenue was a lively weekend spot, Mike Blahowski’s Polka Tavern. “I knew more polkas than Frankie Yankovic,” Jarreau joked, referring to the accordionist crowned “America’s Polka King” by Milwaukee Mayor Frank Zeidler. And while polka never entered his repertoire, Jarreau grew up on a rich and varied musical diet.
His parents, Emile and Pearl, moved north to escape the dead end of Southern poverty and violence. His father was a Seventh Day Adventist preacher who worked weekdays at A.O. Smith in an era when factory jobs in Milwaukee were plentiful and well paid. Working with Jarreau’s recollections, Dietrich describes the milieu where the singer grew up, including the neighboring St. Francis Catholic Church, which despite religious differences, affected Jarreau in a positive way. The Jarreaus were the first Black family on their block but found largely tolerant neighbors; he enrolled without problems in Lincoln High School and graduated with high marks.
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Disarming Prejudice
Whether he or not he airbrushed away any unpleasantness, racism played little role in Jarreau’s memories, even when he was the lone African American in Ripon, a small white town in rural Wisconsin. Perhaps he disarmed prejudice with his winning personality? Dietrich uncovered college newspapers and other documents attesting to his popularity on the basketball court as well a member of the campus’ male-female, fully integrated jazz vocal group, the Indigos.
Along with stressing the values of discipline and education, Emile encouraged his son’s musical inclinations, starting with but not limited to the church choir. At age five he sang at Bronzeville garden parties. “In the car on the way to church, or even when just walking around [Jarreau] would sing bebop and scat or mimic horn riffs.” He listened to Chicago’s R&B station, to Perry Como and Dean Martin, to Chuck Berry and Bill Haley. Early professional gigs included singing with the Mel Marcus Trio at the old Jewish Community Center on Prospect Avenue, a venue that encouraged jazz.
When he was a little older, Jarreau became a regular attraction at the Driftwood Lounge, an unpretentiously elegant nightclub on East Capitol Drive near Radio City, as WTMJ’s studios were called. The Driftwood was the spot for prominent visitors to Milwaukee including Sen. John F. Kennedy, comedian Jerry Lewis and jazz singer Carmen McRae. Dietrich alludes to the difficulty faced by the Driftwood’s owners in a town whose entertainment business was mob-dominated. In 1962, the Driftwood “mysteriously” burned down.
Jarreau had no problem finding other places to sing, including the Columns, a nightclub off the lobby of the Pfister Hotel; Sardino’s on the East Side; and the Holiday House in Milwaukee’s Downtown. Working regularly, Jarreau sharpened his skills as singer and interpreter in settings were “jazz purism” was irrelevant. Years later at the peak of his success, Jarreau was asked to place himself on a musical spectrum with Mel Torme on one end and George Michael on the other. He placed himself dead center.
