“I’ve always felt that the singer is an athlete,” says jazzman Jarreau, 68, who stays fit and shows no signs of slowing down.

The Providence Journal / Glenn Osmundson

It may have been a while since Al Jarreau’s last big chart hit, but the singer has never been busier, with seven records out or in the works since 2000, including his first Christmas disc, due this fall, and the Love Songs collection of duets earlier this year, and a new best-of compilation coming out soon. That’s on top of Givin’ It Up, his 2006 record with George Benson, his jazz-standards record Accentuate the Positive and tributes to Al Green and Bill Withers.

“Between that and the touring, we’re stumbling and rolling downhill,” Jarreau cracks; “where’s a friendly tree stump when you need it?”

So what’s the deal behind this new wave of work? Jarreau says that working with Rhino Records on the Love Songs compilation led to the Christmas disc, which led to the new compilation, but he doesn’t analyze it too deeply. He says that surfing on the waves of show business and taking things as they come has helped him through the lean times, and he’s not going to change now. “You just go when the opportunity is there. You say ‘yes, let’s do it.’ .”

Jarreau, a native of Milwaukee, earned a master’s degree in psychology at Ripon College in Wisconsin, then moved to San Francisco to work in social work, and began singing in earnest there.

He says his psychology background hasn’t come in very handy in the music business — “I’m not sure any kind of training in the working of minds is of any use in the music business!” — though it may say something about him. “I think I came to psychology with certain kinds of innards that had me interested in that work, and maybe it’s those innards that have allowed me to deal with the craziness in the industry.”

He sang in nightclubs for 15 years before his first record deal, and it was another five years before his first hit in 1981 with “We’re In This Love Together.” “Part of that is just love for the craft and ‘I’m gonna do it for free.’… That’s a big part of my tenacity.”

And he takes the same attitudes today. “For me, it’s always been a labor of love. I’ve never made a bazillion dollars selling records. I sell enough records to pay for the project and dinner with a nice bottle of wine for the guys who participated.”

Jarreau is the only singer to have won Grammy awards in jazz, R&B and pop, and he says he gets a different kind of charge out of singing each kind of song.

“I love the R&B song and the pop song, and I love weaving that improvisational stuff in and around that. And that occasional ‘Take Five’ or ‘Spain’ that is a real straight-ahead jazz song — those are wonderful chestnuts that I love doing.”

“ ‘Take Five,’ ‘Spain,’ ‘Blue Rondo a la Turk’ — those are written so specifically by other writers than myself. And so you pay attention to that, and give that song its due, and you lay out the melody and Ima Brubeck’s lyric. But after that, there’s room to stretch. And in different ways than you did eight years ago, or 15 years ago. …

“R&B and pop things have their little written and improvisational areas too, but I’m limited in those pieces.” While you can stretch out the improvisational phase in jazz for many bars, even many minutes, you have to “keep it kind of like the original” in R&B and pop, he explains. “But once you say that, the sky’s the limit inside of there.”

Jarreau, 68, just got back from a month in Europe and heads to Southeast Asia with Benson for several weeks of shows next month. He shows no signs of slowing down, and he sees no sign of it either. He credits physical fitness as an important part of his longevity.

“I’ve always felt that the singer is an athlete. And I ran until my knees said ‘Uh uh.’ And then I walked until my feet and ankles said ‘Uh uh.’ ” Now he rides a stationary bike for 50 minutes before sound check every day.“It starts when you’re on the cross-country team in high school,” Jarreau says. “You learn something about fitness and that becomes part of your routine. And the loneliness of it, and how you have to be a fighter and hang in there, is passed along. I know how to persevere.” He mentions several times his disappointment at the sales of Accentuate the Positive (“I’m sitting there convinced that the world is waiting for my first real jazz project. Wrong! We sold minus-10 copies on that!”), and it seems that it would have been a natural, given the success of standards records by singers with nowhere near Jarreau’s jazz bona fides, but he takes it in stride. He says “there should have been an Accentuate the Positive II and III,” but when it’s suggested that he do it anyway, he says, “At the moment, I’m kind of inclined to wait to see what the long-term response is to that. I want to do music that people want to hear, and if they don’t want to hear that kind of music, I have to walk a fine line.”

He’s put as much real jazz into pop records as anyone in the past 25 years, but he says he needs to strike a balance.

“Sales pay for records, so I can do a little bit for the art and the craft, but finally you want to do music that people enjoy hearing, and I think I’ve been very fortunate in stretching their ears and getting them to hear things they might not have heard if I hadn’t pushed the boundaries and said ‘This is good for you to hear this.’ ”

Doesn’t that get frustrating?

“I think so, but the jazzers, post-big band, had that kind of feeling about the work, that, ‘This is the work to be done and this is the way to say it, everybody come on if you can … but this is the way I feel.’ [And then play] sheets of music. But we lost a lot of people doing that — it got real intellectual and super-personal and almost narcissistic. … I think the jazz community doesn’t take my work real seriously, but that’s OK. I have my own standards, and I think I’ve done just fine.”

Developing those standards, and those instincts, Jarreau says, is what it’s all about.

“That’s an important thing, is to have a realistic sense of the quality of work that you do, and quality work just in general, and to be able to trust your thinking in that regard, so you can measure and gauge how you’re doing, even without serious record sales.”

It’s the same kind of wait-and-see attitude, a cross between laissez-faire and tenacity, he’s taken all his life, and it only comes in handier today.

“Same kind of impetus, same kind of motivations. And a bigger appreciation as you move down the track and watch your fellows jump off and go do other things…. I’ve found new interests inside of the music, and I’m doing it better than ever. That’s a real force. …

“You shrug your shoulders and you keep on keepin’ on.”

Al Jarreau opens the new Showcase Live! at Patriot Place, on the grounds of Gillette Stadium, in Foxboro, on Saturday at 8 p.m. Tickets range from $59 to $115; call (401) 331-2211 or go to www.ticketmaster.com.

Duke Robillard and Steve Smith and the Nakeds top a cast of thousands at a 12-hour benefit for the second annual Polycystic Kidney Disease Foundation, at the Providence Firefighters Hall, 90 Printery St., Providence. It goes from 11 a.m. to 11 p.m. and $25 gets you into the whole thing and gets you dinner too. Call (401) 741-3407 or (401) 272-7999.

A note to my loveliest and charmingest readers out there: The reason I’ve got my e-mail address and phone number down there under this column each week is to have a dialogue — to get tips, corrections and general info. It’s not so you can rant profanely and anonymously and then hang up. If you leave your name and phone number next time, we can have that dialogue. But then, you might find out your little tantrum was based on nothing. And what fun would that be, right?

rmassimo@projo.com