It was a surreal scene, straight out of a Hollywood treatment: a bare-chested Harry Connick Jr. carrying an elderly man to safety, a flood victim whom the American pop icon had literally given the shirt off his back. The news footage from last September 6 shows the jazz singer touring his besieged native city of New Orleans in a Saints cap, sunglasses and hip waders.
"I feel like somebody needs to pinch me. I can't believe this," Connick tells the camera as he drifts in a boat down once familiar neighborhood streets now drowned in disaster. After surveying his father's home, which survived the hurricane and levee break relatively unscathed, the performer and his friends spot an old man sitting alone on the porch of a ruined home. Connick convinces the gentleman to go with him, then pulls his own shirt down over the man's body and picks him up in his arms like a baby and heads into the waist-deep water.
"Man, I can't even think about music right now," Connick later told the NBC cameras on the scene of the catastrophe. "This fellow we met up the street said I ought to write a song about it. I forgot I was a musician for a minute."
But he'd use his music-world cred and star power to help his hometown, as headliner of the nationally televised A Concert for Hurricane Relief. Habitat for Humanity made him and jazz saxophonist Branford Marsalis honorary chairs of its Operation Home Delivery, a program to help rebuild areas ravaged by hurricanes Rita and Katrina, which struck the Gulf Coast region last August and September and wiped out much of the city of New Orleans, taking thousands of lives and uprooting hundreds of thousands of families. In October, Connick testified on behalf of Habitat to the Senate Finance Committee, offering suggestions for how to rebuild.
"Man, I can’t even think about music right now. This fellow we met up the street said I ought to write a song about it. I forgot I was a musician for a minute."
But soon it was back to the business of being a star.
Connick's animated NBC special, The Happy Elf, which he composed, narrated and executive-produced, aired in December. It was based on the song of the same name from his second hit Christmas album, 2003's Harry for the Holidays (following When My Heart Finds Christmas, of a decade earlier). The children's special was just another departure for a man whose titles have included piano player, crooner, film scorer, movie actor and even inventor (for U.S. patent 6,348,648, a computerized system that has replaced his band members' traditional sheet music).
His recent project would take him to the bright lights of Broadway, where Connick stars in a revival of the classic musical The Pajama Game, which ends its run in June. At a time when the Great White Way is seeing a glut of mainstream stars (including Julia Roberts, David Schwimmer, Julianna Margulies, Ali McGraw, Ralph Fiennes, and Cyndi Lauper) on its stages in productions with crowd draw but often dismal critical response, The Pajama Game and Connick's performance received glowing reviews. It was also nominated for seven Drama Desk Awards, including Connick for Actor in a Musical.
This was Connick's first onstage dancing gig. He has said that the experience "was a little intimidating, when you're surrounded by all the professional dancers, these freakazoid dancers … who can do everything. That was a little strange, but they made me very comfortable and I did as well as I could."
Harry Connick Jr. was born to perform. He came into the world on September 11, 1967, and started playing the piano at age three. His lawyer parents, who owned a music store- Connick's father retired recently as district attorney of New Orleans, and his New York-born mother was a Louisiana Supreme Court justice-encouraged him to pursue the muse, and at age six he performed publicly for the first time. Harry was recording with a local jazz band by age 10, and made his first album, titled 11 in 1978. And that started a trend for Connick, who would release three more albums named after the age at which he recorded them (followed by 20, then 25, and 30).
Connick attended the New Orleans Center for the Creative Arts, where he studied under jazz patriarchs Ellis Marsalis and James Booker. Then it was on to New York City, where he attended Hunter College and the Manhattan School of Music and was soon discovered by a Columbia Records executive, who signed him to the label. His adult recording debut was 1987's Harry Connick Jr. -an instrumental album consisting mainly of Connick alone on stride piano. His next effort, 1988's 20 was the first to feature the young singer's velvety voice.
The entertainer's career began in traditional New Orleans-style jazz and stride piano, and as his audience grew, he updated to a contemporary New Orleans sound, with vocals reminiscent of Frank Sinatra, which attracted a loyal mass market audience. As his music evolved, so did his vocal approach. On his 2004 outing, Only You, Connick tackled fifties and sixties Rat Pack-era ballads. "These songs are hard to sing, and they brought out new things in my voice," Connick has said of the album. "There is nowhere to hide on something like 'The Very Thought of You.' You just have to fill up your lungs and sing, without worrying about the details of how each phrase should be inflected. What came out was my voice in a way I haven't heard it. It was like going back to when I was first learning to sing, like the way I sang 'Stardust' on 25. I really sang these songs, and I'm proud of it."
Connick's soundtrack for 1989's When Harry Met Sally made Harry's star explode, and it led to acting roles in movies that include Memphis Belle, Little Man Tate, Copycat, Independence Day, Hope Floats and Basic. His Broadway debut seems like a natural step for this talented performer, whose career achievements include four multi-platinum and three platinum albums, three gold albums, and three Grammy awards.
Connick lives in suburban Connecticut with wife Jill Goodacre, a former Victoria's Secret model whom he met while scoring When Harry Met Sally, and married in 1994. (They have three daughters together: Georgia Tatom, 10, Sarah Kate, 9, and Charlotte, 3.) After Harry's Broadway debut, his stunning wife, when asked about her six-feet two-inch husband's currently buff bod, was quoted: "He lost 30 pounds for this. He worked out like crazy, and he was eating lettuce and chicken and just so healthy and so focused because it required a strenuous workout to do all the dancing. He was so focused, and he's just ripped now."
That physique is also evident in last year's news footage of Connick carrying an elderly man to safety. In other news video, the star rescues a family from the Convention Center, which they'd been directed to by emergency personnel but which was abandoned by the time they arrived.
That physique is also evident in last year's news footage of Connick carrying an elderly man to safety. In other news video, the star rescues a family from the Convention Center, which they'd been directed to by emergency personnel but which was abandoned by the time they arrived.
"Music is a big part of the reason that people go [to New Orleans]. So we’re trying to build houses for musicians that don’t have a place to go. These are American heroes, and they are being treated like animals. That’s not the way it’s supposed to be when you’re 70 years old, not in this country."
The surreal scenes of his hometown underwater had a tremendous effect on the jazzman. "It's just so much bigger than me and so much bigger than all of us," the star has said of the chilling devastation. "But one thing that's not bigger than us is the spirit of the people. You can flood it and make the people run out, but it's a great city. It's my favorite city in the whole world. And when it comes back, it's going to come back stronger."
Concerned that the displacement of New Orleans jazz and blues artists by last year's disaster would destroy the rich musical heritage-and the very fabric-of his hometown, Connick got together with Branford Marsalis and conceived Musicians' Village in conjunction with Habitat for Humanity.
"People go to New Orleans to eat the food, to go see Mardi Gras and Jazzfest and stuff," Connick said in an interview. "Music is a big part of the reason that people go. So we're trying to build houses for musicians that don't have a place to go … These are American heroes, and they are being treated like animals. That's not the way it's supposed to be when you're 70 years old, not in this country."
Land has been acquired by Habitat for Humanity in the city's Upper 9th Ward. The community will consist of 81 musicians' homes and a centerpiece, the Ellis Marsalis Center for Music. Plans also call for at least 150 homes in the surrounding neighborhood.
"If they don't come back … it's going to be a bad scene," Connick has said. "So we have to get the people back … And it's a very delicate sort of balance, cultural balance, in New Orleans. And if you remove the musical equation, it's going to die."
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