CELEBRITY TALES.......AS I REMEMBER THEM: AL JARREAU

I remember a particular Wednesday in 1993 when the door to the ABC studios in Dallas became the door to opportunity for me and the people of Shanghai. Each week, for seven years, I did two specialty shows for Radio Shanghai, the Peoples Republic of China. They were each an hour long and revolved around American pop music. I'm proud of the fact that it was the first American music program to ever run in the People's Republic. The first show of the week was a basic grab bag that featured all of the top pop music of the day. I spoke slowly enough for an interpreter to understand what I was saying and successfully translate it so the listeners would know that Michael Jackson had sung the last song or that Madonna was coming up later in the show. We consciously kept it very simple and played the music we knew they liked. Just like we did in everyday broadcasting here at home. It was programmed based solely on research and, usually, turned out a very safe and boring product. Nothing exciting, invigorating, educational or entertaining about it. Just the basics -“This is.....”, “…....that was...” - like I said, very safe and quite boring. Show number 2, however, was a different story. Each week, I would feature an artist or group and, within certain language constraints, was able to to be informative and introduce the listeners to the artists as human beings, not just melodic voices in the background. I was given full creative control of these shows and as time progressed, I found myself straying from just pop music and experimenting with different genres and artists who were not necessarily in the mainstream. I had to show restraint with some genres, of course. Punk Rock or Heavy Metal music might have gotten our plug pulled by the Central Committee in Beijing. Nothing subversive or political but the amount of material I had left to work with was staggering. One week I might feature the music of Jim Croce and another week, perhaps, the music of Andrea Boccelli and the next week, maybe The Winans. It was a really fun show to do. On this particular Wednesday in 1993, however, while I was on my way to the production studio I had reserved (as I did every Wednesday at this time) to record the show, I was panicking because I had no one to feature. I had gotten a bit busier than usual with my morning show and had overlooked, what I called, “The China Show.” I was preoccupied as I walked, wondering what I was going to do. I only had the room for so long and I was totally unprepared. My head was down and I was moving with a purpose and, yet, I couldn't help but notice, out of the corner of my eye, a medium sized guy wearing a hat, standing, nonchalantly at the front door of the network, brazenly puffing away on, what appeared to be, a Marlborough red. Feeling that it was my civic duty, as an employee in good standing of ABC, to inform the gentleman that smoking was prohibited in the building, I approached him and immediately had two revelations – he was, indeed, smoking a Marlborough red and.......he was Al Jarreau. At that point, I stopped caring whether he was smoking or not and introduced myself, trying to throw in a little charm while asking if I could help him. We started chatting and, before long, I found myself trying to impress him with my love for and knowledge of Jazz. The conversation turned to the legendary John Coltrane and, before I could catch myself, I blurted out the chant from “A Love Supreme.” Al picked right up on it and added the saxophone solo in scat which actually made my background chant sound more like a contribution to a great song and less like I had just had a Tourettes episode. Before we knew it, we had a small crowd in the front lobby. We laughed, gave each other high fives and a hug and that was when I realized that the door to opportunity had just swung open about as wide as it could. I told him about the “China Show” and said that, if he could spare an hour of his time, I could treat the fine folks of Shanghai to the wondrous music of Al Jarreau with a special treat – the artist would be in the studio with me. He very graciously consented and for the next hour we played his hits, “We're In This Love Together,” “Take Five,” the theme from “Moonlighting,” he even did “Mornin'” live in the studio. It was a pretty magical hour and I have no doubt the Peoples Republic of China was a little richer, culturally, for it. At least that's my assumption. I got plenty of mail from the listeners but it was all in Mandarin and the only person I knew who could translate was a waiter from local Chinese restaurant and since, by tradition, I only ate Chinese on Fridays and Christmas – the busiest times in a Chinese restaurant – it took a little longer than I would have liked. We did, indeed, get a consensus: they loved the show. And I learned a valuable lesson - sometimes, on the other side of the door of opportunity, you might just find some Kung Pao Shrimp.