This crooner and actor shares all the
ways to let the good times roll in his swinging
hometown.
Hey, Harry Jr.! We're going to have Harry Jr. come up and play a
tune with us!" These words play endlessly in Harry Connick Jr.'s
memory. For the young
New Orleans musical prodigy, the words were a
siren's call from the bandstand of the Maison Bourbon, a French
Quarter club where Connick's parents took him from age 5 to 14 to
listen to - and eventually play with - the greats. "I would go up
and play a couple of numbers and then sit back down," he remembers.
"It was the greatest feeling in the world." Educated on the city's
bandstands, Connick would eventually introduce a new generation to
the glories of jazz. The son of two lawyers who also owned a record
store - his late mother was a judge; his father served as district
attorney - Connick was sitting at a piano by age 3, performing
professionally at 6, and recording at 10. At 19, he released his
first major-label album. Two years later, in 1989, he contributed
to the soundtrack of When
Harry Met Sally, a hit comedy starring
Meg Ryan and
Billy Crystal. Connick was proclaimed "the new Frank
Sinatra." When he decided to try acting, Connick became a movie
star almost overnight, debuting at 22 in the film Memphis Belle,
then starring opposite
Jodie Foster in Little Man Tate, Will Smith
in
Independence Day, and
Sandra Bullock in Hope Floats. While
swimming in a Hollywood hotel pool, he first spotted his future
wife, former Victoria's Secret model Jill Goodacre, and dashed
after her, soaking wet, to convince her to have dinner with him.
Now, when Connick's not touring, he's filming (catch him in a
remake of Rodgers and Hammerstein's classic
South Pacific on ABC
this month and opposite
Sarah Jessica Parker in the dark romantic
comedy Life Without Dick later this year). However, his veins are
forever filled with the gumbo of his hometown, where he hopes to
return someday to live with his wife and their two daughters. "The
whole point of going to New Orleans is to realize that you sleep
when you're dead," he instructs. "Eat as much as you possibly can,
and then go out and eat some more. If you're going to visit for a
week or a weekend, forget your diets, forget getting your beauty
sleep, because it's not going to happen." Here's a weekend without
restraint in Harry Connick Jr.'s New Orleans.