LYCOS RETRIEVER 
Al Jarreau: San Francisco
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Al Jarreau has toured and performed with such greats as Joe Sample, Kathleen Battle, Miles Davis, David Sanborn and Rick Braun. He ... performed the role of the Teen Angel in a 1996 Broadway production of Grease.
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Jarreau grew up in a religious household; his father was a minister and Al began singing in the church choir at the age of four. In 1960, he graduated from Wisconsin's Ripon College, where he performed locally with a group called The Indigos on weekends. After earning his Master’s Degree in Vocational Rehabilitation from the University of Iowa, he moved to San Francisco to begin a brief career as a social worker. There, his desire to sing persisted, and he found himself performing at a small jazz club with a trio headed by George Duke.
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In San Francisco, Jarreau met another celebrity-in-the-making, George Duke, and began performing with his trio. As the group played small jazz clubs in the Bay Area, Jarreau became convinced that music would become not just an avocation, but his career. Toward that end, he moved to Los Angeles and started working the club circuit there. He cut his teeth at such noted venues as Dino's and the Bitter End West before expanding his efforts to the East Coast of the United States, where he gained national exposure on network television via such household names of the time as Johnny Carson, Merv Griffin, and David Frost. He ... provided musical interludes for such up-and-coming comics as John Belushi, Bette Midler, and Jimmie Walker at the famed comedy club - The Improv - in New York City, New York. It took a while before the record companies noticed Jarreau, but it did not take forever.
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Born in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, the son of a vicar, Jarreau's first singing experiences were in a church choir. He attended Ripon College, where he ... sang non-professionally with a group called the Indigos, and graduated in 1962. He went on to earn a master's degree in Vocational Rehabilitation from the University of Iowa and worked as a rehabilitation counselor in San Francisco before joining a small jazz club trio headed by George Duke and deciding that he would make professional singing his life.
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That artistry began in his childhood home of Milwaukee where Jarreau, the son of a minister/foundry worker, sang with his brothers. An honor student in high school and college-he has a bachelor's degree in Liberals Arts and masters in Vocational Rehabilitation-Al hit the California jazz scene in the sixties.
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While he never turned his back completely on his music, Jarreau put it on the back burner for a time after high school. He earned a degree in psychology from Ripon College in Wisconsin in 1962, and followed that up with a master's degree from the University of Iowa in 1964. He then moved to San Francisco, where he worked as a rehabilitation counselor.
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