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Harry Connick, Jr. has turned one of the most personal stories of his life into a moving book and music project honoring his late mother. In this new Joann Butler In Studio With..., the incomparable Harry Connick, Jr. says his latest passion project Babe: Elaboratio was a long time coming, inspired by his mother and the dream she had for him to one day perform at Carnegie Hall. After losing her to ovarian cancer when he was just 13, Connick decided he would wait for a truly special reason to enter the iconic New York City venue, after decades of turning down opportunities to perform there. That moment finally came on May 22 of this year, what would have been his mother’s 100th birthday, when he performed music written just for her. “I remember being very emotional during the performance,” he says. The project also includes a companion book, which Connick wrote alongside the music, and a large-scale recording featuring a full orchestra of 70+ musicians from Orchestra Victoria and the Harry Connick, Jr. Big Band. For Connick, the tribute reaches beyond his own family. “This is about women. This is about mothers and how infinitely powerful that is,” he tells Butler. Babe: Elaboratio – A Tribute to My Mother is out now digitally and on CD, along with Connick’s debut book of the same name. The vinyl edition of the album arrives November 13. Music has been central to Connick’s life from the beginning. Growing up in New Orleans, he was already deeply immersed in piano as a child, eventually studying with legendary musician James Booker and developing the voice that would become just as recognizable as his playing. That long musical journey would later stretch into everything from four Christmas albums to one of his most enduring pop-culture moments, When Harry Met Sally... Connick credits director Rob Reiner with giving him an early break on the film, calling the opportunity “one of the greatest strokes of luck” of his career. He shares the stories behind it all — and more. This is a LifeMinute with Harry Connick, Jr.
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00:00My mom always wanted me to play at Carnegie Hall.
00:03She knew that I loved music from when I was a little kid.
00:05On what would have been my mom's 100th birthday,
00:08I walked out and I performed a piece of music I wrote for her.
00:11How old were you when you started playing?
00:13They tell me I was three. I don't remember that,
00:15but I made my first album when I was nine.
00:17And your father got you lessons with Booker, right?
00:20It was an incredible childhood.
00:22It would be like if you were a basketball player
00:24and your parents were friends with Michael Jordan.
00:26A beautiful tribute to your mother.
00:28It's not only about my mom, it's about every woman.
00:32I was so lucky that he called me that day when I was 19 or 20
00:36and asked me if I would sing some songs
00:38and it was one of the greatest strokes of luck I've ever had.
00:41I've done four Christmas albums. I could probably do four more.
00:43Has your relationship with the piano changed at all since you were a kid?
00:47Oh, what a great question. I don't think anyone's ever asked me that.
00:51Hi, you're watching Joanne Butler in studio with me, Harry Connick Jr.
00:56Harry Connick Jr. in the house. Welcome to Life Minute.
00:59Thank you. It's great to be with you.
01:00Oh, so happy to have you.
01:01You have a beautiful new album and a new book.
01:04Babe, a laboratio, a beautiful tribute to your mother.
01:09My mom always wanted me to play at Carnegie Hall.
01:12She knew that I loved music from when I was a little kid.
01:14And when I really started getting into it, like five, six years old,
01:18she used to tell me all the time, that's my dream for you to play in Carnegie Hall.
01:21Well, a couple of years passed and she was diagnosed with ovarian cancer when I was around 10.
01:26So I called Carnegie Hall from New Orleans and I asked them if I could play there.
01:32And they said, this is the box office. We don't really hire talent.
01:36So my mom died when I was 13 and I didn't have a chance to play there.
01:41So I decided that I was going to wait for a special occasion,
01:44not only to do some kind of tribute to her, but to even go into Carnegie Hall.
01:50So for decades, I never went inside. I had never been inside that hall.
01:54And about eight years ago, my manager called Carnegie Hall and asked if they had May 22nd, 2026 available,
02:01because that would have been my mom's 100th birthday.
02:04And I waited until 730 that night, never having walked into that room.
02:09And then at eight o'clock I walked out and I performed a piece of music I wrote for her.
02:13Amazing. What does that feel like?
02:15It's hard to describe. I don't really get nervous before performances.
02:19I love to play and I love to be on stage, but it was a strange feeling because, you know,
02:2445 years I had thought about what it would be like to play on that stage.
02:28And all of a sudden I was there and I don't remember much about it.
02:32I remember being very emotional during the performance, but I don't remember a whole lot about the show itself.
02:39What do you think she would have said if she knew you made it?
02:42I think she would have been thrilled because she was the type of person that was very open about her
02:47love for me and for my sister.
02:49And she was very communicative and she let everybody know that, you know, she was proud of her children.
02:55So I think she would have been really happy.
02:57Yeah, what a woman.
02:59Yeah, she was something else.
03:00I didn't know that whole back story about how young you were when you lost her
03:04and that both your parents were record store owners when you were little.
03:07And then, of course, they're attorneys.
03:09Right.
03:10Amazing.
03:10She was a judge.
03:11That's right.
03:11Your dad was a DA.
03:13Tell us about that upbringing.
03:15Well, it was really amazing.
03:17And at the time it was sort of all I knew.
03:20My mother met my father when she was in Morocco.
03:23She didn't have a great home life in New York.
03:25She was born in 1926 in New York and ended up leaving when she was in her mid-20s.
03:30She went to Europe.
03:31She ended up in the Middle East just sort of, you know, traveling around looking for work.
03:36I think she had a secretarial job somewhere in Istanbul and then she found some work in Morocco.
03:41My dad happened to be in Morocco working for the Corps of Engineers and they're both in their, you know,
03:47mid-20s.
03:48And they met, fell in love and eloped.
03:51And then when it was time to come back to New Orleans, my dad's hometown in 1953 or 54, my
03:58dad got tuberculosis.
03:59So he had to stay on bed rest over there.
04:02And my mom flew back by herself to this town she had never been to New Orleans and moved in
04:06with her in-laws whom she had never met.
04:08My mom couldn't really get work because she was this Jewish woman from New York.
04:12And New Orleans was kind of a provincial town back then and weren't really too excited about hiring this woman
04:17from out of town.
04:18Maybe the Jewish thing had something to do with it.
04:20So she started her own little record store.
04:22My dad came back, was still on bed rest, but helped her get the store going and they saved money
04:29to go to law school.
04:30And then about 10 years later, my sister was born and then I was born after that.
04:35Amazing.
04:36You've written this beautiful music that tells the three parts of her life that you just said and then the
04:41companion book.
04:43What made you think of that idea?
04:45When I sat down to write the music, I knew I wanted to start with her nickname, Babe.
04:50So fortunately those letters are in the musical scale, B-A-B-E.
04:54I wrote those.
04:55I started to expand on that.
04:57And as I started getting deeper into the music, I wanted to write down the idea so I wouldn't forget.
05:03Like in Measure 22 you have trumpets playing or snare drums playing this rhythm.
05:09I didn't want to forget all that.
05:10So I started to kind of write that down just as a diary.
05:13Then I started to think, well, I want to write about what I'm imagining my mother was like.
05:18And it came a little bit more expanded.
05:20And then I decided, well, maybe this could be a book that could sort of go along with the music.
05:25And if people are interested in the music, they'll learn a little bit more about my mom and why I
05:29chose to write those things.
05:30So I kind of wrote them both simultaneously over the period of about six weeks.
05:33You did a beautiful job.
05:35That was such a good idea.
05:36I was listening while I was reading.
05:38You're the first person I've talked to that's because that was the idea.
05:41And I didn't know if anyone would actually do that.
05:44Did you find it was easy to kind of?
05:47Yes.
05:47Did it make sense?
05:48Yes.
05:48Wow, that's cool.
05:50And a 60 or 70 piece orchestra, your big band?
05:54Yes.
05:55So when I put it together, I was thinking about different musical instrument configurations that I could do.
06:00Would I have Hungarian instruments for the Hungarian side of my mom's family?
06:04Or would I, you know, would it be jazz or what would it be?
06:06And I took all those ideas out of my head and just started writing what I wanted to write.
06:10It turned out to be a full orchestra, you know, 70, 80 musicians, plus my big band.
06:15So there's a lot of people on the record and a lot of people that were with me at Carnegie
06:19Hall.
06:20What does New York sound like versus New Orleans?
06:23That's such a great question because if someone were to ask you to describe New York,
06:28you would have however way you describe it, same as me.
06:32I wasn't trying to write what sounded like New York as much as when I see my mom as a
06:38little girl walking through the streets,
06:40what did that sound like?
06:42And it didn't have to sound like New York as much as the feeling of it.
06:46It's hard to describe, but it wasn't like I was writing music that was in New York at that time.
06:51I wasn't trying to write 30 sounding music.
06:53I was just writing what it could be.
06:56There's a part in the music where my mom meets my dad and you think it would be this, you
07:01know, lush romantic thing,
07:02but it doesn't really sound because I wrote with no preconceived notions.
07:08I just wrote what I felt like at the time.
07:11It's hard to describe.
07:12It just sort of kind of wrote itself in a weird way.
07:15So amazing.
07:16And it just comes?
07:18It just comes?
07:18Yeah.
07:19Like if you sat in a room with a tape recorder and described something from your life, you may not
07:27be able to articulate it right away,
07:29but if you sort of closed your eyes and imagined and just sort of let yourself be present and peaceful,
07:37you really can't predict what you're going to say.
07:39And that's what it is.
07:41It's this unpredictable snapshot of that moment in time.
07:46And you were, how old were you when you started playing?
07:49So I was, they tell me I was three.
07:52I don't remember that, but you know, I wasn't really playing anything great.
07:54I was just kind of plunking around.
07:56And then I got really into it when I was probably six or seven when I really started taking lessons.
08:01And then, you know, I made my first album when I was nine and I was playing, you know, classical
08:06music and stuff not long after that.
08:09So I was pretty, I'm glad I could do that because I couldn't do anything else.
08:13Oh, I don't know about that.
08:14You do quite a lot.
08:15Well, I mean, I was, I wasn't a good student, you know, I wasn't a good athlete.
08:18Like I just, I'm glad I had music.
08:21That was, that was saving grace.
08:22That's amazing.
08:24What was it like?
08:25Like, well, obviously they're both into music too, but, and your father got you lessons with Booker, right?
08:31Yeah, that's right.
08:31Tell us about that.
08:33Well, James Booker was an amazing, brilliant musical genius from New Orleans.
08:38And my parents knew him and they, they would take me to see him play.
08:43And I kind of developed a little relationship with him and would always ask him if, if I could take
08:48lessons from him.
08:49And he was kind enough to, to stop by the house sometimes and show me things.
08:53And, you know, looking back, I think about the musicians I played with and it would be like, if you
08:58were a basketball player and, you know, your parents were friends with Michael Jordan, you know, and you got to
09:03say, hey, Michael, can you show him a few things?
09:05Or, it was an incredible childhood.
09:08Amazing.
09:09And I can't believe how much you remember too at 13.
09:12Yeah.
09:13Oh yeah.
09:13Well, those were such formative years.
09:15And because my mom died, I think I remember things maybe in a heightened way because of that.
09:21Like some, some years blur together.
09:23Like if you said, you know, what were you doing when you were 42?
09:26I'd have to really stop and think, but those years are very clear.
09:30It's beautiful.
09:31And what made you want to tell your mom's story without words?
09:33It's hard to articulate a lot of the feelings I have about my mom because they're very pure feelings of
09:40love and respect and security.
09:45So that's part of it.
09:46The other part of it is there's something beautiful about the abstractness and the romanticism of, of instrumental music where
09:53you might feel one thing when, when it's played, I might feel something else.
09:57And so there were, there were things in there that I wanted to tell specifically, which is what I wrote
10:02about in the book.
10:03And there are other things that I didn't really want to speak specifically about.
10:07Some of the tough things my mom went through as a kid, but I wanted the feeling of that.
10:12So you're able to write about things and sort of hide them in plain sight.
10:16And maybe you'll evoke something emotionally.
10:19I know what it invoked in me, but it doesn't sort of tell you how to feel.
10:23Like if I write, you know, a song about my plant died without you knowing that you might feel any
10:29number of emotions.
10:30But if I say, hey, this is about that, I'm sort of telling you.
10:33And so I didn't want to sort of dictate to people how to feel.
10:35I wanted to, because it's not only about my mom, it's about every woman.
10:40It's about every mother, because the impact my mom had on me in 13 years is so profound.
10:44I realized through the course of writing this that this goes way beyond my mom.
10:48This is about women.
10:50This is about mothers and how infinitely powerful that is.
10:56And I wanted to sort of leave a little bit of it, you know, open ended.
11:00Beautiful.
11:01And of course you have three girls.
11:03I do.
11:04Do they learn even more about their grandma?
11:06It's been incredible watching them through this process.
11:09We also shot a documentary about this whole event, writing the music, retracing my mom's steps in Morocco, in New
11:18York, in New Orleans.
11:20And all three of my daughters were very involved.
11:22So much so that my daughter Georgia, who is a filmmaker, directed it and edited it.
11:26The other two were very much involved in the production of it.
11:28So, you know, when I go in the edit bay and I see Georgia sitting in front of this computer
11:32for 12 hours a day, studying this film and learning about my mom and the footage of my mom, like
11:38it's really, it's been an incredible experience for our family.
11:42You know, it's brought us a lot of joy in a very specific way.
11:47Beautiful.
11:48What do you think your mom taught you about being a parent?
11:51So much.
11:52She was a great believer in the discovery process.
11:54So rather than sort of offer unsolicited advice, she was a person who believed in sort of experiential learning.
12:02She would allow me to figure things out for myself.
12:04I remember she was Jewish and she put me in Hebrew school when I was really, really little.
12:08And there's an audio tape.
12:11My dad was recording me and my mom like a little interview when I was like three.
12:16And we had learned about Mordecai that day in school.
12:18And my mom said, well, who'd you learn about?
12:20I said, Mordecai.
12:21She said, well, who was he?
12:23And I said who he was.
12:24And the first question she asked me was what color was his face?
12:28And out of all the questions she could have asked, and I said brown.
12:33And what I didn't understand at the time was what my mother was telling me without telling me was excellence
12:40comes in all shades.
12:41And you will figure this out as you grow.
12:45She didn't beat it into me in some heavy handed way.
12:48She was all about allowing me to figure things out and sort of presenting these general guidelines.
12:52She did it constantly and let me figure out things, which is an amazing luxury.
12:57And as a parent, I tried to employ a lot of those same techniques.
13:01So cool.
13:01What about the story when you wanted to run away and she went with you?
13:05Yeah.
13:05I was in my room.
13:06I was having a terrible tantrum.
13:08I was pretty emotional as a kid.
13:10I went into my room five, six years old and throwing clothes in a suitcase, crying.
13:15She said, what are you doing?
13:16I said, I don't want to live here anymore.
13:18I want to run away.
13:20And she said, all right.
13:21And she walked away and came back a couple of minutes later with her suitcase.
13:26And I remember her standing there in the doorway.
13:28I said, what are you doing?
13:29She goes, you know, I thought about it.
13:30You're right.
13:31I don't want to live here anymore either.
13:33And I'm like, really?
13:35And she said, let's go.
13:36And we went outside.
13:38We got into her car.
13:39She turned on the car and I started bawling.
13:42She go, what's wrong?
13:43I said, I don't want to run away.
13:45She goes, I don't want to run away either.
13:47Now, that's a, you know, she wasn't like that all the time.
13:50It wasn't just like you figure everything out.
13:52I mean, if I was walking into oncoming traffic, she would be a mother.
13:56But many times she would provide these situations for me to kind of discover it myself.
14:01And that's an amazing way to develop trust with a parent when you don't feel like they're
14:06overbearing with advice.
14:08If they kind of sit back and let you make mistakes, you're invariably going to come up
14:11and say, wait, what do I do here?
14:13And that's the kind of relationship I had with her and my dad and the kind of relationship
14:18my wife and I have with our daughters.
14:20Beautiful.
14:20So good.
14:22Has your relationship with the piano changed at all since you were a kid?
14:25Oh, what a great question.
14:27I don't think anyone's ever asked me that.
14:29It really has.
14:30When I was a little boy, it was like a magical box.
14:33Like I would press down on this key and a sound would come out.
14:36And I didn't understand that, how that worked.
14:38And you play two of them at one time, two notes will come out.
14:41And you can also, it's a percussion instrument.
14:43So you can play it like a drum and play different rhythms.
14:46And this chord sounds sad and this chord sounds happy.
14:49And wait, you can do two different things at the same time.
14:51You can play a melody with one of the hands.
14:53And that was really magical to me.
14:56I didn't understand what any of it meant.
14:58I didn't know what the keys meant.
15:00And then as I started studying a little bit and understood that there's more efficient
15:04ways to move your fingers and there's other ways to play this chord.
15:08It's like a thesaurus.
15:10Like you could play a C chord, but there's other ways to say that.
15:13Like you can play it low and spread it out and have a certain feeling.
15:16You could play it high.
15:17And then I started surrounding myself with people who intimately understood the instrument
15:21and realized I don't have a clue how this thing works.
15:24And then you really get into the theory of it.
15:27So you have the hardwired kind of passion to play.
15:32But when you couple that with craft and technique, it's like being a painter and you have all these colors.
15:38And at one point you're like, well, what happens if I mix blue and green?
15:42You don't know.
15:43But then when you know that that's going to make purple and if you add this, that'll change.
15:47When you have the craft to go along with the desire, it's immensely powerful.
15:53And so that was my goal is to learn as much as I could.
15:56And I'm still learning.
15:58There's still, oh, I didn't know those two notes could go together.
16:01I mean, after all these years, I'm still figuring stuff out.
16:03Amazing.
16:04What about your voice?
16:05When did you know you could sing too?
16:07Well, you know, when I was a little boy, Louis Armstrong was my hero.
16:10So I used to imitate him.
16:11And my mom used to worry I would mess up my voice because you have to, you know, gravelly.
16:17And then when I got to be about 18 or 19, I started singing in the way I sing now.
16:23I just didn't know how.
16:26And I practiced and I had one month of lessons by a terrific vocal trainer,
16:32a singer named Marion Collins here in New York.
16:34And he sort of explained to me what to do so that you can do it every night so that
16:40you don't, you know, hurt yourself or give yourself nodules or whatever.
16:44And I used those very basic techniques over time to try to accommodate what I was doing with my voice.
16:52And it was just I remember when I would be in these concerts and I'd start singing.
16:57It would people would listen in a different way.
16:59Instrumental music is great.
17:01And when you sing, it just it brings people in in a different kind of way.
17:04So I'm just glad that I love to do both.
17:06Christmas music.
17:07Oh, I love that.
17:09It's endless.
17:10I've done four Christmas albums.
17:11I could probably do four more just because there's so, so much great music.
17:15And I love that time of year.
17:16I think it's such a wonderful time of year.
17:19And I've been so lucky that people have associated nice memories of Christmas with music that I've done.
17:24It's just an amazing feeling.
17:26Oh, it's the best.
17:27Yeah.
17:27Harry Met Sally.
17:28Yeah.
17:29You've made that movie and it's like coming back again.
17:32So cool.
17:33What do you think it is about it?
17:34Rob Reiner was an incredible talent and he was just a master filmmaker.
17:38And I was so lucky that he called me that day when I was, you know, 19 or 20 and
17:44asked me if I would, you know, sing some songs.
17:46And it was one of the greatest strokes of luck I've ever had.
17:49Amazing.
17:50So good to keep you for another hour.
17:52No, it was so fun.
17:58For me to come back.
17:59It was fine.یں
17:59And then, what have you noticed? Bye
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