Milwaukee native Al Jarreau's friends launch Kickstarter campaign for tribute album

Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

The "Acrobat of Scat," Milwaukee native Al Jarreau, passed away on Feb. 12, 2017, at the age of 76.

But the legacy and music of the seven-time Grammy Award winner lives on — including on a forthcoming tribute album.

Al Jarreau's former bandmates have launched a Kickstarter campaign to complete a tribute album, to be released in December, with a tour to follow.

Curated by Chris Walker, Jarreau's friend and former band member for 20 years, "We're In This Love Together — A Tribute to Al Jarreau," is scheduled to come out in December, followed by a tour.

Walker has created a Kickstarter campaign for the project, with a $50,000 fundraising goal by May 31. Pledges range from $10 for a digital download to $5,000 or more for a personal concert with Walker.

Chris Walker, right, was in Al Jarreau's band for 20 years and was his musical director. He is overseeing a tribute album for the late Milwaukee native, with a fundraising goal of $50,000 on Kickstarter.

The album will feature Jarreau's former bandmates — including his most recent musical director, West Allis native Joe Turano — and special guests including Grammy-nominated saxophonist Dave Koz, Greg Phillingaines, Paul Jackson Jr., Nathan East, Bobby Lyle and Gil Goldstein, with more to be announced.

"I can't think of anybody who is more equipped to carry on the Al Jarreau legacy than Chris Walker," Koz said in a statement.

The project is also endorsed by Jarreau's team and family.

"I'm really appreciative that Chris Walker and the rest of the band decided to do a tribute album for my father. It means a lot because they are like family to me," Jarreau's son, Ryan, said in a statement.

Jarreau was the fifth of six children — his father was a minister, his mother a piano teacher. He began singing when he was 4 or 5 years old, he told the Journal Sentinel in a fall 2016 interview.

His love for music deepened as a student at Lincoln High School. "I began to have ideas of taking this as far as I could," Jarreau told the Journal Sentinel. "And I kept dreaming that dream and nourishing that dream.”

He graduated in 1958 and attended Ripon College, where he studied psychology and formed his first vocal group, the Indigos. He left Wisconsin after that — first to get a master's degree at the University of Iowa, and then to San Francisco, where he worked as a rehabilitation counselor before becoming a full-time musician in 1968.

His storied career — which included 21 albums and the famed theme song for '80s TV series "Moonlighting" — took him all over the world. Jarreau remains the only vocalist to win Grammys in the jazz, pop and R&B categories, collecting golden gramophones in the 1970s, '80s, '90s and 2000s.

But his Milwaukee origins remained a major point of pride. Before he died, he requested that in lieu of flowers and gifts, that donations be made to the Wisconsin Foundation for School Music, to provide financial assistance for Milwaukee Public Schools students in need for participating in music programs.

“I am very concerned that, today, children in my hometown of Milwaukee, and across our country are not getting the same exposure to arts that I had,” Jarreau wrote in a Journal Sentinel opinion column in March 2016.

"For the sake of our own sane and healthy survival here on Earth, we must learn to understand each other better. And the arts are a common language for communicating toward this goal.”

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