(09-05-2013, 09:00 PM)Miguel Wrote: Quote:(HCJ) has seven top-20 US albums, and ten number-1 US jazz albums, earning more number-one albums than any other artist in the US jazz chart history.
He was 22 (Haley's current age) here:
Quote:Bobby Colomby, the drummer for Blood, Sweat & Tears and a friend of director Rob Reiner, recommended Harry Connick, Jr., as the musician to work with on the soundtrack. When Reiner listened to the tape Colomby gave him, he was struck by Connick's voice and how it sounded like a young Frank Sinatra. The movie's soundtrack album was released by Columbia Records in July 1989. The soundtrack consists of standards performed by Harry Connick, Jr., with a big band and orchestra arranged by Marc Shaiman. Connick won his first Grammy for Best Jazz Male Vocal Performance.
Arrangements and orchestrations on "It Had to Be You", "Where or When", "I Could Write a Book", and "But Not for Me" are by Connick and Shaiman. Other songs were performed as piano/vocal solos, or with Connick's trio featuring Benjamin Jonah Wolfe on bass and Jeff "Tain" Watts on drums. Also appearing on the album are tenor saxophonist Frank Wess and guitarist Joy Berliner.
The soundtrack went to #1 on the Billboard Traditional Jazz Chart and was within the top 50 on the Billboard 200. Connick also toured North America in support of this album. It went on to reach double-platinum status.
And, I guess I helped make that soundtrack go #1. But, as I mentioned in the AI 2014 thread, I was initially confused and then disappointed with it. In the movie
It Had to Be You is a Louis Armstrong recording (sorry, I can't find an online recording to capture);
Where or When, the superb/sublime rendition by Ella Fitzgerald
;
Write a Book, the incomparable Frank Sinatra (I think it may be from this version, that the
Write a Book we hear in the movie.)
[video=youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XGuaoiI1bSc [/video]
While I assumed that Reiner must have been trying to give Connick a break into the business, I still felt -- I don't know -- cheated? Connick's renditions weren't necessarily imitations, but were, to me, poor substitutes. And then there were tunes that he flat out destroyed.
Stompin at the Savoy was unrecognizable (It was the musical equivalent of being drawn and quartered, as far as I was concerned -- it was absolutely dreadful. I grew up listening to what my mother liked -- the Big Band Era. Oddly enough, because of my musical own growth and tastes that I've acquired, she's now a big "jazz? fan [or so she claims] and Count Basie has replaced Glen Miller.
Personally, I, like everyone I know of who played in those high school/college jazz bands, gravitated to preferring small combos that make the music intimate.)
And its his (Connick's) rendition of
Savoy that really makes me think that what he told the AI 12 contestants was hypocritical. But, in truth, I don't know that someone didn't sit him down after that horrid recording and say to him what he said to the contestants this past spring. I don't know that he didn't take that conversation to heart so much that ..... well, there is much I don't know about HCJ's musical journey, assuming that's what it was.
There was a different song of his on the rotation of this station today. I didn't hear it. While I can understand that some may hear "Sinatra" when listening to Harry, I hear how far removed from Frank he is. While there are some obvious Sinatra styling choices on the
When Harry Met Sally soundtrack, Harry's voice is thin, and he definitely doesn't have the richness, resonance or depth of Sinatra's voice. If we stop trying to compare him to Frank Sinatra, and just let Harry be Harry, it's OK.
But, frankly, I -- we -- don't know what he'll be like as an AI judge.
