Harry Connick Jnr sure is in a myth-kicking mood this morning. He may, at first, be relatively monosyllabic as he speaks on the phone from his home in Los Angeles, but perks up as soon as he's asked about his musical role-models and mentors. Such as? Ellis Marsalis, father of Wynton and Branford and himself a pianist in the New Orleans bop movement; Tholonious Monk plus, of course, Francis Albert Sinatra. In fact, listening to Connick focus on such figures finally fractures claims that, of late, he has "sold out" on his roots in music, become far more interested in movies, marriage and, as one critic acerbically noted: "photo opportunities rather than his art".
But first, the background. Connick was born in 1967 and raised in "a home and city suffused with jazz" - New Orleans. At the tender age of three, he started "dabbling" at the piano and, by the time he was 10, was performing with local bands in the legendary Bourbon Street. Connick also attended the New Orleans Centre for the Creative Arts and, while studying at the Manhattan School of Music in New York, contacted the vice-president of jazz at Columbia records, a characteristically self-confident move that resulted in the 1986 release of Connick's debut album. But it wasn't until 1989 he got his "big break" after recording a set of pop standards for the movie When Harry Met Sally.
Around the same time, Connick made what many commentators - myself included - saw as the rather dubious, if not decidedly arrogant, claim: "When I play I try to be like Monk, when I sing I try to be like Frank." More than a decade later, the tone of his voice suggests that is a quote he'd rather forget.
"Tony Bennett started this off by saying: `this guy is going to be bigger than Sinatra' but that quote you mention I made at a time when you were supposed to imitate people," he says. "I don't do that any more, which is what happens when you develop your own style. But Thelonious Monk was one of the great intellects in music, extending some of Duke Ellington's concepts. As in the way Monk'd swing, the way he developed themes, composed. And exercised restraint. People talk about the `dissonance' in Monk's style, but those are ignorant statements. There's nothing dissonant about what he did. Those are just American harmonies. It's hard to capsulise but that, to me, is why Monk was such a big influence on my style."
As for Sinatra? Well, maybe not surprisingly, Connick also feels it's time to lay to rest another "ignorant statement" about the vocalist he regards as "probably the greatest popular singer of all time". Yes Frankie, too, was "a big influence", but was that in the sense of, say, Sinatra's much-praised breath control? As in the "trick" young blue eyes himself said he picked up from watching Tommy Dorsey "sneak a breath" through a pinhole in his mouth, while playing trombone, which helped Dorsey create a continuous stream of notes without breaking to draw breath? Not exactly, explains Harry.
"These are legends that are passed down that are completely inaccurate. Tommy was talking about circular breathing but you can't, physically, circular breathe without a mouthpiece pressed to your mouth," he says, clearly challenging claims made by Sinatra and all those jazz and opera singers who say they do use this technique, irrespective of whether they inhale air through the nose or mouth, while singing. "I can do it, if you give me a trumpet mouthpiece. But you do have to inhale through your nose. So what Sinatra actually did, to develop his breathing, was swim underwater, run, whatever. Yet what I listened to Frank for was to figure out how he managed to interpret a lyric as he did - as if it were poetry or a piece of drama - yet still remain within the harmonic boundaries of the tune. People talk about his "phrasing", but that's really what phrasing is. You can't change a lyric unless you know what's happening harmonically. Because if you don't know, you could, to put it in its most basic sense, sing a note that doesn't go with the next chord. But Sinatra understood all this. That's why he was, even at a technical level, so brilliant."
That said, it's the depth of emotion in Sinatra's songs that propel them into the area of high art. One criticism levelled against Connick is that his music doesn't have this kind of substance; that, perhaps, he needs an Ava Gardner to "kick him in the gut" to make him follow Frankie down that particular path. But would Connick even aspire to match the despair Sinatra captures on an album such as Only The Lonely?
"I think I already have. On every song I've ever done," he says, with not the slightest sign of self-consciousness. "OK, I'll never be able to sing like Sinatra does on that album, but then he'd never be able to sing Danny Boy like I do on my latest album. Every singer is different. And you can only deal with any song from the level of your own emotions. As for Sinatra and Ava Gardner? I think the pain is inside you and, of course, things are going to happen to trigger that, but I'm not going to talk about the pain in my life because that's nobody's business. If Sinatra wants to publicise his pain, that was his way. I'm not interested in doing that."
Indeed. Connick admits he dislikes it when "linear lines" are drawn between his music and private music. The latter he rarely discusses in public and even feels it's necessary to contradict this reporter when I suggest that his last album, To See You - a self-penned set of ballads - was "said to be about" his wife, former model Jill Goodacre.
"It's not," he claims. "Because a lot of the songs were tragic. It was more a look at different interpretations of love, things I've thought about. You don't have to be a dog to be a vet! But the real reason I don't like people reading autobiography into my songs is because that takes the artist out of the artistic process. The point about creativity is to be able to create. If all we were able to do was write about what we've lived, what's the point in that?"
All of which brings us to Connick's latest album, Come By Me, a CD he admits has sold fewer copies than To See You, although the newer release is the focal point of his current tour. With its deliciously left-of-field mix of standards and originals it is, arguably, a better album. Tracks such as its title song, which evoke the spirit of another of Connick's early heroes, James Booker, certainly bring him back to a time when he was a "junior" in New Orleans. Likewise, what Connick describes as Lucien Barbarin's "tailgate growl" on Cry Me a River, brings us back to a period when jazz itself was being born and Louis Armstrong recorded his other-worldly solo on West End Blues. Not only that. Connick's arrangement of Cry Me A River paces the song as if it were the kind of funeral march Louis played on the streets of New Orleans during the early years of the 20th century.
"When you mention Louis Armstrong's West End Blues, man, that's some of the greatest music ever made," Connick enthuses. And that definitely is the type of tune I grew up listening to and still love. Just as I love the kind of New Orleans funk I played in Ireland last time I toured there. Both forms of music are very important parts of my life. But different parts. And the new album I'd see as a jazz album."
Cutting through the kind of record company hype that's supposed to accompany interviews such as this, Connick readily agrees that his tendency to record his own vocals for Come By Me on top of a prerecorded orchestral track doesn't exactly lend itself to the kind of improvisation that is a hallmark of jazz.
`THAT is true," he says. "Take a tune like There's No Business Like Show Business. I don't like the way I sung the intro. Because it highlights exactly what you're talking about. I do pre-record the orchestra because I haven't worked out how to conduct an orchestra and sing at the same time. If I sang that song live with an orchestra the conductor would follow me and I'd interpret it any way I want. But in the studio I feel I blotched up the lyrics, in the intro. You can hear I'm restricted. It's only when we get into the main part of the tune I get it right. To tell you the truth, I can't stand laying down my vocal on a given track like that. But what do you do? Hire a conductor?"
Actually, Harry, yes. Indeed, given that Connick has been accused of too often "hogging the spotlight" and thinking "I can do it all myself", maybe he should haul out of semi-retirement someone such as Johnny Mandel? He pauses before answering. "My fear is that they won't get exactly what I wrote, that they're not as familiar as you are with the music you've written. But maybe I will think about that, in terms of the next album."
Harry Connick Jnr and his Big Band play The Point on Saturday, March 11th 99£48£8979