‘Pleasures’ Fuel McFerrin Plans to Slow Down

The Bobby McFerrin phenomenon is like nothing else in the annals of recording.

His “Simple Pleasures” album (EMI/Manhattan) is the biggest a cappella hit in the history of music. This week the LP reached No. 12 on Billboard magazine’s pop chart, with sales of 800,000 units. It is expected to go platinum (1 million) within weeks. The single “Don’t Worry, Be Happy” just arrived at the No. 1 spot with well over 400,000 units sold.

It seems almost impossible to turn a page in Billboard without finding McFerrin on one chart or another. Hot Adult Contemporary, Top Black, Top Compact Disks, Hot 100 Singles, Hot 100 Airplay, Top Contemporary Jazz--he’s in them all.

No wonder he feels he can afford to take some time off. Last week, calling from his San Francisco home, he said: “My cutoff date is Oct. 1. No more touring for a year.”

His concert tonight at the Wiltern Theatre in Los Angeles will be one of the last before he withdraws from the frequent flyer competition.

Of course, that does not mean that he will sit back and relax. “I plan to organize a 12-voice choral group,” he said, “and write arrangements for them. I’ll take occasional gigs in San Francisco, maybe a couple of TV shows and special events, but basically I’ll be staying home with my wife and sons.” (Son Taylor, 7, has “a good ear and good eyes,” and, according to his father, could become a musician or a painter. Jevon, 3, also is musical.)

In taking this semi-sabbatical, McFerrin, 38, is living up to a resolution made during a 1982 interview: “I want to develop my own choir and write choral music, sacred and secular. . . . I can’t see myself as a traveling vocalist for more than another 10 years or so; if I’m going to be raising a family, that’s no way to live. It’s a great experience visiting new places . . . but the 12-hour plane trips I can do without.”

The exposure he has enjoyed during the past two years has been without precedent. He is heard every week doing the Cosby show theme; he sings the Levi’s 501 blues; he has gained enormous popularity with children through teaching them the alphabet on “Sesame Street.” Several times last year he offered his show-stopping rendition of “The Star-Spangled Banner” at San Francisco Giants games.

The current album is without question his supreme achievement. Though technically still on his own, he becomes, through over-dubbing, the most ingenious of all one-man orchestras. “Every tune has at least three tracks,” he said, “and in ‘Good Lovin’ there are 10 tracks. It took about five weeks in the studio to do all 10 songs. I recorded the low-register tracks first, then worked my way upward.”

McFerrin’s approach to the vocal art is unlike that of such predecessors as Jon Hendricks, who relies on setting words to jazz instrumentals. Panting, laughing, grunting, humming and supplying his own bass lines, often wordlessly, he is sui generis, though he said, “Some of the techniques I employ are used by certain pygmy tribes in Africa; and of course there is a relationship to yodeling.”

McFerrin’s musicianship has been integral to his success. He wrote arrangements for a school band while studying at Cerritos College in Norwalk, then became a professional pianist for seven years until an epiphany (in the form of what he calls “a voice within me”) told him to take up singing. He became a stand-up singer with a group called the Astral Project, in New Orleans, in 1979. Later, during the few months he spent with Jon Hendricks, Bill Cosby heard him and recommended him for a solo spot at the 1980 Playboy Jazz Festival. It’s been strictly onward and upward ever since.

Because of its multitrack nature, “Simple Pleasures” cannot be reproduced in person. Different concepts apply to his concert performances, involving audience participation singalongs and occasional collaborations with another artist; he has appeared with the bassist Rob Wasserman, and with saxophonist Michael Brecker during a European tour.

“I’ve also talked to Yo-Yo Ma about the possibility of our doing something together. We met at Tanglewood, where I had one of the greatest thrills of my life--having been invited to take part in the 70th birthday celebration for Leonard Bernstein.

“I sang Bernstein’s ‘Somewhere.’ Patty Austin and I were the only non-classical artists in that long show. Afterward he came over, gave me a big embrace and congratulated me.”

In view of the global adulation McFerrin has enjoyed during these past few hectic months, his sabbatical may well become theoretical. It is hard to imagine him turning down the offers that are bound to proliferate in the wake of “Simple Pleasures.” Whatever his decisions, it’s a sure bet that the “Don’t Worry, Be Happy” advice will be as easy for McFerrin to act out as to sing.