The Deceptive Ease Of Cole Porter: In-Depth With Harry Connick, Jr.
It has been 30 years since Harry Connick, Jr. became an improbable pop star, on the basis of a movie soundtrack that just happened to put many of his best features on display. If you know Connick at all, you might remember that album, When Harry Met Sally..., as some kind of watershed: a burnished vision of New York sophistication that renewed the American songbook for a dashing new cohort. Connick's first vocal entrance — on "It Had to Be You," set up by a momentous orchestral overture — conveyed all the ritual glamour of a leading man stepping from behind a curtain onto a proscenium stage.
Connick has a spruce new album, True Love: A Celebration of Cole Porter (Verve), that extends the sound and spirit of those early songbook triumphs. And he's now in residence on a proper stage — at the Nederlander Theatre, performing songs from the album in a Broadway show that he conceived and directed, and of which he's naturally the star.
There were no Cole Porter songs on When Harry Met Sally..., which went double platinum and won Connick his first of his three Grammy awards. But Connick has plenty of experience with Porter, whose blend of musical polish and wry lyrical sophistication made him a gold standard in the firmament of American popular song. While making True Love, Connick came to realize just how deeply deserved that reputation is, and how much nuance is needed to do justice to the material.
Connick talked about those welcome discoveries — and about balancing artistic ambition with commercial appeal, and the puzzle of orchestrating Porter's music, and much else besides — during a phone interview from his home in Connecticut. At 52, he retains the boyish enthusiasm that helped make him a household name, along with his New Orleans drawl.
NPR Music: The idea of Harry Connick, Jr. doing a Cole Porter songbook album feels like something that should have happened a long time ago. Do you feel that way?
I don't think it could've happened before, only because I wasn't really interested in doing it before. The problem with making records is, you have to pick. I guess I could have made this album, easily, 20 years ago. But I'll tell you what happened: I went in to meet with Danny Bennett, who was the head of Verve when I first started there. He's the guy who asked me if I would be interested in coming over there, because I had been with Columbia for a really long time. So when I met with him, he said, "What do you have in mind?" I said "Man, there's so many records I want to make.
