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Al Jarreau VibeZ

The only artist to win Grammys in jazz, pop and R&B. Al Jarreau could use his voice as a rhythm section, a horn line, or simply as a voice, and thirty-one tracks show all three.

The instrument nobody else had

Al Jarreau was born in Milwaukee in 1940, the son of a minister, and had a master's degree in vocational rehabilitation and a career as a counsellor before committing to music in his thirties. That late start is worth knowing; he arrived fully formed because he had spent years developing something entirely his own.

What he developed was a vocal technique with almost no precedent: a percussive, elastic approach that used the voice to imitate instruments — not novelty scat, but genuine rhythmic and timbral invention, with clicks, pops and glottal effects deployed as musical elements. He is the only person to have won Grammy Awards in the jazz, pop and R&B categories, which is less a trivia fact than an accurate description of where he sat.

He died in 2017, days after retiring from touring.

What to listen for

"Spain (I Can Recall)" is the essential track. Chick Corea's instrumental, with Jarreau singing the melody, the solo and a lyric he wrote himself — and doing it live, nightly, for decades. It is one of the great vocal performances in any genre.

"Mornin'" and "We're in This Love Together" are the pop hits, and "Breakin' Away" is the album that made him a mainstream star.

"Teach Me Tonight" is the standard, handled with real jazz credibility, and "Waters Of March" with Oleta Adams is the Jobim — a song built almost entirely from a list of nouns, and one of the hardest in the repertoire to sing convincingly.

"Summer Breeze" with George Benson comes from their Givin' It Up collaboration, and "Your Song" is the Elton John cover.

"Alonzo" and "(A Rhyme) This Time" are where the vocal experimentation is most exposed. Listen with headphones.

Go deeper

Look to the Rainbow (1977), a live album recorded in Europe, is the record musicians point to — it captures what he actually did in a room. Breakin' Away (1981) is the commercial peak.

For the vocal tradition: Ella Fitzgerald and Jon Hendricks are the ancestors, and Bobby McFerrin the only real contemporary — the two of them are the entire category of singers who treat the voice as a complete band.

And George Benson's Breezin' is the neighbouring record, produced by Tommy LiPuma, that opened the commercial space Jarreau then occupied.

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