For smooth crooner Al Jarreau, every day is a reaffirmation of life

“I celebrate getting up every day,” laughed Jarreau during a recent telephone interview.

The seven-time Grammy winner will perform Saturday, August 15 at Thornton Winery as part of the 2015 Champagne Jazz Concert Series.

“The amazing thing about a Temecula as a venue and place is that people come there to listen to the music,” he said. “I was in Europe this summer and especially in Italy they have come up with the idea of doing music in shopping malls in the big atrium. I must have done six or eight dates in a mall. They gather chairs and tables around and get 200 people and it starts to spread out to those moving around the mall. The ones at the tables and chairs have paid an entrance fee, but the other are not really listening but they are shopping.”

It’s a different musical culture, and Jarreau is okay with different, especially since he has hit the charts and won Grammys in pop, jazz and R&B.

“The way we listen to music now is with earbuds as we walk around doing other things, chins on our chests while we text,” he said. “It doesn’t mean the same to people as before, but I am going with it.”

The draw for any fan of Jarreau is not just the music but the showmanship on the stage.

“The stage presence is developed over time,” he said. “If people are carried to the top of the charts and the top of the tier of artistry as you have to be so much these days in order to break into the game, they are required to perform as seasoned artists and that is very hard to do and most cannot do it. It takes a long time for an artist to develop and evolve into someone who loves to and can communicate with people.”

It is about the music, the humor and the connections.

“If you ever heard Louis Armstrong entertain, you can see it,” he said. “He would play the trumpet, but it was with a great sense of humor. He’d say something to the people that was a continuation with him. The live experience should be fun. I mean, you can look as far back as Vaudeville and there was that guy who could get up and dance and that connected him to the audience. That’s how you reach people’s hearts.”

He has been reaching people for decades, both from his hits and his shows. Of course, one legendary track is “We’re in This Love Together.”

“That song was written by Roger Murrah and Keith Stegall, and the people in my office listened to it,” he said. “We would get five or six submissions a week, and most of the time we weren’t interested, but they came running into the studio after hearing it. I was working on new stuff, and they told me I had to come hear it. So I stopped and they played it for me and we stopped what we were doing and got ready to record ‘We’re In This Love Together.”

Another popular fan favorite is “Mornin’”

“There’s a cartoon that goes with that in the video and a lot of people swear by that song,” he said. “’After All’ is another we do that gets people dancing.”

Jarreau is about getting that connection with people that gets them to show emotion.

“It is about opening up your jacket and showing your heart,” he said. “That’s what keeps people listening to live music. You have to love what you are doing and that is so important to sustaining it and having a joyful experience.”

And while Jarreau has decades under his belt, he still feels the same as he did in the early days in some ways.

“Yes, there still is that pressure to have hits, and It will never go away,” he said. “You still feel compelled to have hits, to reach people now, especially now that I’m not so much in the limelight.”

And there was a time when the limelight was very strong.

“I was pretty young once and had good legs,” he laughed. “But thank God there are still women that sit up front and people of all ages coming to my shows. There are people who were with me in the early days and now they have grandchildren they are bringing to the show. And the front of the stage has people up and dancing, people on their feet and rocking to the music and many of them are young people.”

And Jarreau absolutely loves that.

“I hope that appreciation continues because a lot of modern stuff is about dancing and high wire acts and you can’t sing when you are doing all that so it is lip-synched and everything is pre-recorded,” he said. “It’s a different kind of entertainment but I want to give people the experience. I want them to feel the brush of air from the bass drum, the ruble of the bass guitar, the in your face live music. You appreciate that craft because it is so organic. And it needs to be preserved for the player that does it and the person who sees it.”