Ooh la la, Harry (From The Northern Echo)

Ooh la la, Harry

3:42pm Friday 27th November 2009

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Andy Welch discovers how Harry Connick Jr persuaded Carla Bruni to sing on his new album.

WHEN you’ve got connections like Harry Connick Jr, asking the French First Lady Mrs Sarkozy, Carla Bruni, to lend her voice to a song on your new album is easy. New Orleansborn Connick Jr, 42, is married to former Victoria’s Secret girl Jill Goodacre, who was firm friends with Bruni during their Eighties and Nineties modelling heydays.

“I’d never met Carla before,” says Harry, “but she and my wife would hang out all the time when they were doing shoots. Carla’s very beautiful, of course, but also very charismatic, like a force when she walks into a room,” he adds.

“She just came in and sang, too, no messing around; the take on the album is the first take. It was really strange when the two of us were talking and President Sarkozy came in to see us. I thought ‘It’s the freakin’ President’ and the dynamic shifted from two musicians talking to the President of France and the First Lady being there. My posture changed, let me tell you,” he continues. It’s a different presentation when a President walks in. There’s no slouching.”

Connick Jr’s latest album, Your Songs, is a collection of cover versions recorded with record-producing heavyweight Clive Davis.

The name isn’t one you’d immediately associate with an artist known for his piano playing and smooth crooning. Davis is more of a big-voiced divas man, having teamed up with Simon Cowell to produce Leona Lewis’s two albums. He also signed Whitney Houston to his label in the Eighties.

“It wasn’t my idea to work with any producer, not Clive or anybody. I’d never really thought about it,” says Connick Jr. “The thing is 2 Clive asked. And I said ‘yes’.

“People ask why I’ve not done any music for movies since When Harry Met Sally,” he continues, referring to the 1989 soundtrack that helped launch his career and bagged him a Best Male Jazz Vocal Grammy.

“I’d never pursue it, but if someone like Steven Spielberg came up to me and asked for a soundtrack to his next film, I would do it.

“Anyway, Clive had an idea for the album, and said ‘Why don’t you work on songs that everyone knows, to really feature your singing?’ I thought it sounded like a good idea, but didn’t know where he’d come in.

It was a road I hadn’t gone down before, working with a producer. It seemed like fun though, a new way of doing things and, you know, I’m 42 now and wanted to try something interesting.”

The album features standards of the Great American Songbook such as Mona Lisa and Some Enchanted Evening, a take on The Beatles’ And I Love Her – Connick Jr’s duet with Carla Bruni – and a number of songs you might not associate with him.

Close To You, for example, by The Carpenters.

“It never would have occurred to me to sing that song if Clive hadn’t have suggested it,” says Connick Jr.

“It’s definitely part of that whole Seventies easy listening thing, and that’s just not me, but when I played it my way, and did my New Orleans piano thing with it, it made sense.”

There may well be another covers album after this, although Connick Jr isn’t quite sure what he’s doing next.

He is, however, confident Your Songs won’t be his last album and rightfully so – he is among the top 50 biggestselling artists in US music with more than 16m sales.

He claims he can only concentrate on one thing at a time and has little room in his head to think about anything other than promotion.

“More than any talent, I have a skill for compartmentalising my brain,” he says. “Right now, I’m the worst songwriter in the world because I’m just thinking about talking, but I’m a good conversationalist.

“I’m a horrible musician, horrible actor right now too… I can’t think about two things at the same time,” he adds, offering this as the explanation to why he only writes songs when he actually needs to, rather than perpetually as many songwriters do.”

Connick Jr has appeared in around 20 films, some big, such as Memphis Belle, Copycat, Independence Day and My Dog Skip, and some stinkers, Wayward Son being being a stand out, but he maintains he’s proud of all them, success or flop.

“I’ve made some horrible movies,” he says honestly, “and some of the songs I’ve recorded aren’t good at all and I could have done things differently. But it’s never been a question of doing it for someone else.

You have to go to bed each night happy with the choices you’ve made, and I’m completely happy and comfortable with mine. I can live with every decision I’ve ever made.”

Connick Jr is one of the names continually bandied around to be playing Frank Sinatra in the rumoured biopic Martin Scorsese is going to direct.

He replies: “Well, firstly, I’m good friends with Frank’s daughter Tina, and I’m sure if there was a film she would be involved and might have mentioned it to me. “But if Martin rang me and asked? I’d really have to think – playing one of the most famous men who ever lived, directed by one of the greats. What would you do?”

■ Harry Connick Jr’s new album, Your Songs, is out now

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