Harry Connick Jr's "Your Songs" Available Tuesday, September 22

[props4pops]

Columbia Records recording artist, singer and pianist Harry Connick
Jr., just barely out of his thirties, has released 24 albums under his
own name, which have sold 25 million copies around the world. Although
he has recorded various genres of music, from traditional pop to
instrumental jazz to funk and blues, he has shown a deep and abiding
affection for The Great American Songbook (and his own songs written
in that classic style).

Connick's newest Columbia album, Your Songs, to be released on vinyl
on August 25 and on CD September 22, both extends this tradition and
compliments it. Like his best-selling Only You of 2004, Your Songs
consists of Connick singing familiar songs with a full jazz big band
and string orchestra, and, as with nearly all of Harry's previous
albums, he wrote each of the orchestrations himself. (He also
recruited two of his lifelong friends from New Orleans, Branford and
Wynton Marsalis, as well as bluegrass guitar virtuoso Bryan Sutton,
for guest appearances). On most of his albums, Connick is a virtual
one-man band. "My usual pattern is I either write the songs or pick
the songs," he says. "Depending on the configuration I arrange,
orchestrate, conduct, sing, and then oversee the mixing and mastering.
You might say that I'm very hands on."

However, what makes Your Songs different from all of Connick's
previous projects is that this album represents the first occasion in
which he has teamed up with a record company producer, the legendary
Clive Davis. For nearly 50 years, Davis has been one of the leading
lights of the music industry and more recently was promoted to Chief
Creative Officer (CCO) at Sony Music Entertainment after heading the
BMG Label Group.

Your Songs is a genuine collaborative effort in which Clive picked
most of the songs, Harry arranged and orchestrated them, and then
turned the reins in the studio over to his long time friend and
producer, Tracey Freeman. "Clive expressed an interest in working with
me," he recalls, "but I didn't know what that meant because I had
never done a collaboration before."

Davis' concept was to put together a program of classic songs that
were both as familiar and as contemporary as possible. Both by
accident and design, the selections are skewed towards signature songs
for iconic performers: Elvis Presley's "I Can't Help Falling In Love
With You," Nat King Cole's "Mona Lisa," Tony Bennett's "Who Can I Turn
To?," Frank Sinatra's "All The Way," Billy Joel's "Just The Way You
Are" and nine others. "Songs that everybody knows," was how Davis put
it, rendered with what he describes as "accessible arrangements."

When Davis first approached him, Harry's initial idea was to bring in
a famous arranger but Davis suggested that Harry write the charts
himself. Even so, the finished results would reflect the producer's
own strong pop sensibilities.

The opener "All The Way" is more intimate and lighter than we're used
to hearing, with a beautiful tenor saxophone solo by Branford
Marsalis. "And I Love Her" uses a hint of a bolero underpinning to
make the Lennon-McCartney classic seem even more romantic than when
sung by The Beatles. "The Way You Look Tonight" has been heard for
most of the last 70 years as an uptempo swinger, but Harry brings it
back to its original status as a slow and intimate love song. "The
First Time Ever I Saw Your Face" was originally written by Ewan
MacColl in the style of an Olde English folk song, then it was reborn
as a 70s pop hit, but Connick sings it as a classic Broadway style
love song, very emotionally direct, with his heart right on his
sleeve. Elton John's "Your Song" is herewith given a finger-snapping
beat.

For Burt Bacharach's "Close to You," which features the brilliant New
Orleans trumpeter Leroy Jones, Connick notes, "I went in the studio,
and I just started playing, and I wound up giving it a whole different
groove. I kept the tempo, and I had a guitar play the famous intro
vamp, and overall we gave 'Close To You' more of a Gospel feeling."
Likewise, he added more of a jazz beat to Billy Joel's all-time
classic, "Just The Way You Are."

The immortal Mexican love song "Besame Mucho" was done at the
suggestion of Harry's father. "Mona Lisa" is treated more like a dance
number than is customarily heard, while "Smile," which is usually done
as a minor key lament, is also much more cheerful and upbeat. Harry
starred in the acclaimed ABC TV film of South Pacific, but the show's
great love song, "Some Enchanted Evening," was the property of another
character; Harry makes up for that here by romping through a solid-
four reading of the Rodgers & Hammerstein classic.

"Who Can I Turn To" is dedicated to the song's composer, the late,
great British singer-songwriter Anthony Newley. Don McLean's "And I
Love You So," is unique in the annals of American pop in that it was a
big number for both Perry Como and Elvis Presley; Connick sings it
with a straightforward sincerity. Connick recruited Wynton Marsalis to
play on "Can't Help Falling In Love." "I asked him to play the melody
on an Elvis Presley tune. And he said, 'I get it! No problem.' But it
wasn't a waste of his time because he played it perfectly, in a way
that a lesser musician couldn't have done."

When Harry talks about the beauty of playing or singing a melody as
simply and beautifully as possible, he's getting to the essential
truth of what makes this album special. To be able to take familiar
songs and make something fresh out of them - without eviscerating the
qualities that make them great to begin with - is truly a rare gift.
And it's a gift that Harry Connick, Jr. displays in abundance on Your
Songs, making it one of the extraordinary efforts of his career.


Pre-order "Your Songs" at Amazon.com:

Vinyl: http://www.amazon.com/dp/B002I0O9RK/?tag=neworleanbooksto
CD : http://www.amazon.com/dp/B002DYJAJ8/?tag=neworleanbooksto

#