EARWORTHY. - Review - sound recording review

Undoubtedly, Al Jarreau is back. Not that he at any time went away; you could hear him all above 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 novel jazz vocalist and are perennial broadcast favorites

on the contrary betchu didn't know that Tomorrow Today (GRP/Verve) is Jarreau's first album in five years. That's eon in the world of popular music. Five years without something fresh from Jarreau is 20 musical seasons without fresh songs from the voice of individual of the world's most talented artists. "I kept writing and rest myself working as much as I've at any time worked without an album project" Jarreau said recently

Can an artist be not on the recording scene for five years and advance back hittin'? The answer: one time proto-, now archetype, Al Jarreau is funky as he wanna be. A five-time Grammy winner who earned acclaim for We Got by dint of (Reprise) in 1975, Jarreau has single platinum and four gold records hanging upon the wall. He knows by what mode to produce hits, and Tomorrow Today is no exception.

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

Can we have more [i]or[/i] less more of that? Feel the voodoo, the hoodoo, the Sly: Jarreau has everything in motion with a machiavelian rhythmic ferocity supercharged on the down depressed in the tune "In My Music."

And it come bys even better--if you can belee dat. upon "Through It All," Jarreau is master of harmonic pour 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 by what mode You Say It": all are brilliant examples of the contemporary art song

in truth there will only ever be single Al Jarreau. The rest will always be only like Al Jarreau, or, maybe, Jarreauesque.

There's a 50-track, three-CD Isley Brothers chested 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 necessityed 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 inn Theresa, Hendrix had pawned his guitar. When O'Kelly buy backed 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 particularizeed in an interview in the liner notes. "All this disarrange 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 above Kelly said, `Mom, this is our fresh guitarist.' And Jimi just mov in, like a member of the family."

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

Entrepreneur who were inducted into the stone and Roll Hall of Fame in 1992 the Isleys recorded greatest in quantity of their major hits for their be in possession of label, T-Neck. "Fight the Power," "Caravan of Love" "The Pride," "Take Me to the nearest Phase" and "Don't Say Goodnight"--all carols that went No. 1--were all recorded for T-Neck

floated and propelled by the plain 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 runlets Shepard is a writer in Boston.

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