There’s just something about Connick and Christmas.
The swooning, crooning star of stage and screen has sold 28 million records, including his biggest-selling album ever, “When My Heart Finds Christmas.” Connick – as in, of course, Harry Jr., has just released his fourth holiday album, “Make it Merry,” in advance of his latest visit to Denver’s Buell Theatre on Tuesday.
He loves the season, he loves the songs, and he loves what they do for people’s spirits at this time of year.
“My job is to go out there and make people feel better when they leave than they did when they came in — and I take that job very seriously,” Connick told The Denver Gazette. “People spend a lot of money for these tickets, man, and this is a confusing, angry, divisive, vitriolic time in our country. So if people are gonna pay money to come hear me play, I am going to entertain the heck out of them as best I can.”
Connick’s love for Christmas music is rooted in his deep Catholic faith, but he is also a plain sucker for a good melody — and holiday songs, he says, have some of the best.
Connick, who has been playing piano since he was 3 and was performing with a New Orleans jazz band by age 10, grew up surrounded by Christmas classics at his New Orleans home. He has many happy holiday memories of “The Christmas Song” — the “Chestnuts roasting on an open fire” tune by Nat King Cole. “I mean, that's kind of the ultimate Christmas song,” he said.
But his choice for best Christmas tune of all time is a bit of a long shot. “If I had to pick, I’d say probably 'Sleigh Ride,' only because that's just a ridiculous melody, and it has incredible chord changes,” he said. That’s the song by Leroy Anderson and Mitchell Parish with the sleigh bells jingling — and ring-ting-tingling too. (And, side note: It has chestnuts, too.)
“There are a million great Christmas songs, but that one is pretty extraordinary,” Connick said. “It’s actually really substantive.”
Connick, who has released 34 records and appeared in 21 films, has done a little bit of everything. He’s appeared on Broadway, he narrated “My Dog Skip,” he sang on the “When Harry Met Sally” soundtrack,” he starred opposite Glenn Close in an ABC production of “South Pacific,” he married Grace on “Will and Grace,” and he was a judge on “American Idol.”
“I don't like to be idle too much,” he understated. But when the pandemic hit, he retreated to his home in Connecticut with his Boulder-raised supermodel wife, Jill Goodacre, and three daughters. He was cut off from his many musical collaborators, but the forced isolation gave him the opportunity to reconnect with the holiday music he loves. Connick went into his home studio and began recording new holiday songs and traditional classics revisited through a pandemic lens.
Connick necessarily arranged all of the songs, played every instrument and sang every part, track by track. “I love being in the studio, and I love doing that type of recording,” he said. “It's different than when you are with a band or an orchestra. It's a lot of overdubbing.”
Connick emerged with the album “Alone With My Faith,” which earned him his 18th Grammy Award nomination. And one thing about holiday songs: “You’re never going to run out of material,” he said. “Make it Merry” now joins the collection — more new songs, religious hymns, standards and new interpretations of songs he’s released before. That’s jazz, baby.
“I would record one tune and then say, ‘What’s next?' Well, I have never done 'It Came Upon a Midnight Clear,' and so then I would do that,” he said. “I just love these songs and these types of orchestrations — and I think people can probably sense that.”
One difference between records, Connick said: This time, he’s joined by some of the best players in the business. “It’s all me on most of the songs, but there are a couple of big-band tunes like ‘Jingle Bells’ and (the Cajun-infused original) ‘Papa Noel’ where I leave it to the professionals,” he said. “There is some real complicated horn stuff on those songs.
“So when I was on the road, I would tell my trombone player, 'Come in this dressing room with me,’ and we would record first chair, then second, third and fourth chair on my laptop — and then I would get my trumpet player to do the same thing. But then I would get to the end and think, 'You know what? I really dig the way this sounds, but I'm just gonna add some strings, a French horn, a harp. So it ends up being a really cool combination of some human beings playing real instruments, and some synths and keyboards. I am proud of it. I am so happy with this album.”
All that pandemic time also meant bonus time for Connick with his family, which brought with it another creative reward: The “Alone With My Faith” album cover and two music videos were conceived by his oldest daughter, Georgia Connick. She’s an emerging photographer and video producer who snapped the press photo of Connick that you see with this very article, promoting the 29-city holiday concert tour stopping in Denver on Tuesday.
“Jill and I are lucky to have three amazing kids, and Georgia has really learned her craft over the past eight years,” said Connick, who traveled with Georgia in an RV taping a salute to COVID heroes for CBS in 2020. “She's highly creative, she has an incredible work ethic and she’s just a great, great person to work with.”
Connick says coming to Colorado is like coming home, given that Goodacre graduated from Boulder High School and still has lots of family in the area — many of whom will be “making it merry” with about 3,000 others at the Buell Theatre on Tuesday.
“I have been to Denver a thousand times,” he said. “When we come to Colorado, we usually go straight to Boulder, because that's where Jill’s gang is. But I just love Denver, and I love Colorado. It’s an incredible state — and it's different than any other. You know, it's got its own feel to it.”
There’s not much that can make the holiday season any more meaningful to Connick than it already is. “The holidays are all about family time for me — that's really what I love,” he said.
Connick’s mother died of ovarian cancer when Harry was just 14. But he still has his 96-year-old father, also named Harry. He’s both a musician and club singer who served as New Orleans’ controversial district attorney from 1973 to 2003. But the son, now 55 himself, doesn’t think of Christmases with his father in terms of how many they have left.
“Yeah, my dad is 96, but I feel the same way about him now as I did when I was 20,” he said. “I can pick up the phone and call him a couple of times a day, which I do. I go see him every month. But I don’t really think of it in terms of how much time he has left. I think of it as he’s here now — and that’s what matters.”
Connick will be joined by 12 musicians on the Buell Theatre stage Tuesday for what he says is his first Christmas concert tour in five years. “It’s going to be a whole bunch of fun songs that everybody knows — and the musicians are just ridiculous,” he said. “It will be fun for us because these are songs we don't really get to play very much.
“Whether I am playing in New York or Denver or some town you have never heard of, it's all the same to me. I just give everything I have, and I'm truly humbled and thankful that people come. I hope they are able to get a break from the world for a couple of hours when they come to see me. I am just excited to get out there and play.”