Turning the Jazz World on Its Ear

David Letterman wants him to be a “Late Night” regular. David Puttnam wants him to test for a movie role. Rob Reiner wants him to help score a new film. Spin magazine wants him to pose for a swimsuit spread. Columbia Records wants him to record a third album. Some women just want him, period.

But, right now, all Harry Connick Jr. wants is to get off this airplane.

“I feel sick ,” the 21-year-old jazz pianist moans as Continental Flight 2491 lurches around inside a pocket of air turbulence near here, causing his normally fresh-faced complexion to turn an alarming shade of green. And, for the next half hour until the prop jet touches down in Denver, Connick’s mind isn’t on his recent meteoric rise in the music industry, or his current status as the darling of the media after a much-ballyhooed four-week stint at the famed Algonquin Hotel, or his seemingly limitless future in many aspects of show business, or his upcoming gigs in Southern California and at Lincoln Center.

(He will be at the Catalina Bar and Grill in Los Angeles Tuesday through Sunday, the Coach House in San Juan Capistrano April 18 and also at the fourth annual Singers’ Salute to the Songwriter benefit for the Betty Clooney Foundation at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion April 25.)

Connick’s mind right now is on trying to recover the stomach he left somewhere over the Rockies in time to make the next leg of his trip to Los Angeles for an all-important meeting. “Like, I’m going to Rob Reiner’s house tonight. That blows my mind,” he says, back on solid ground and sitting in an airport cocktail lounge where he has ordered a tomato juice. Neat.

“This may be the wrong thing to say, especially when I’m dealing with a publication that a lot of the people in Hollywood read. But, in all honesty, that whole scene means absolutely nothing to me. Still, it’s impressive for me to meet a celebrity. I’m still star-struck.”

He pauses, trying to strike just the right note of humility. “How can I not be?”

Looking at this guy with the jangled nerves of the still-rookie frequent flier and the open-mouthed awe of the celebrity autograph hound, it’s hard to believe that just the previous night he was able to summon up enough calm and confidence to give a concert at a packed hotel ballroom with all the professionalism of a veteran performer twice his age.

Outfitted for the evening in a stylishly baggy ensemble of white-and-brown striped jacket with matching chocolate trousers and turtleneck, his hair slicked back with gel in what is now his trademark retro-look, his beige socks rolled down to his loafers in the same manner as his idol, Louis Armstrong, the New Orleans pianist who plays in the style of such jazz greats as James Booker and Professor Longhair and sings like a young Sinatra was more than just in control of himself. He was also lord and master over the spellbound audience who ate up everything from his jokes (“Sinatra in concert says ‘Jack’ a lot. I say, ‘Doug!’ That’s the difference between us.”) to his imitations of the Rev. Jesse Jackson and Vice President Dan Quayle.

“Wow- eeee !” he’d cry out whenever the crowd would interrupt his playing with applause. “Y’all ain’t heard nothin’ yet. Look out now cuz I’m gonna break the pi-anah!”

Though he never made good on his pledge (despite pounding out on the keyboard many of his favorite “total swing-out” jazz classics from Duke Ellington, Count Basie and others), it is Connick’s insistence on breaking with certain long-cherished traditions in the jazz world and making up new rules as he goes along that has so captured the imagination of both the media and the music industry and made him so appealing to the motion-picture industry.

Specifically, Connick has rejected the notions that a serious jazz musician should play only in small clubs for serious audiences instead of aspiring to Shea Stadium so non-jazz aficionados will turn out to hear him; that good jazz musicians can’t also be good stage performers and maintain their musical integrity in between bantering bits with audiences; that jazz musicians should be old or black or struggling instead of young or white or successful; or that jazz musicians who make TV appearances and act in movies aren’t selling out but rather selling the idea of jazz to a wider audience.

And he dismisses mounting criticism by his colleagues that this Jazz Baby will be a Jazz Bust when the media forget him, or when his hair turns gray, whichever occurs first.

“It doesn’t matter when some people say, ‘Oh, you’re just going to be the newest Flavor-of-the-Month, man,” Connick says with a shrug. “Because no matter what happens to my career, if I’m playing at Madison Square Garden in front of thousands of people or I’m playing in an airport bar, I’m still going to be doing what I’m doing--which is still trying to get the same sound out of the piano, still trying to be swinging, still trying to play this music all over the place. I mean, rock and roll doesn’t need any help. But I’d do anything for jazz. I’d die for this music. So if I get a part in movies, that’s going to help jazz and all the jazz musicians because if people like me, then, hopefully, they in turn will like the music I do.”

And they like him, they like him. So well, in fact, that after he appeared recently on the hip after-hours NBC music show “Sunday Night,” singer-songwriter Paul Simon came up to him and said, “I hear you’re a genius. I’m very excited to meet you.”

Though Connick rejects the “genius” appellation--even though he was playing the piano at age 3, performing in public at 6 for his dad’s inauguration as New Orleans district attorney (a post Connick Sr. still has), earning money in jazz clubs at 9 and recording his first album at 19--he does acknowledge that Simon’s praise was “a kick for me to hear.”

If that’s the case, Connick should be thoroughly black-and-blue by now, as career opportunities which other performers would kill for keep falling into his lap effortlessly.

For instance, an executive with Connick’s record company mentioned to Reiner recently that he should use the young artist’s music in his latest film, “When Harry Met Sally,” starring Billy Crystal and Meg Ryan. “And the next thing I know I’m at my dad’s house in New Orleans and I’m being told that Rob Reiner’s on the phone. And I’m like, ‘ Whoa! ‘ “ Connick explains. Now the musician is singing two songs and scoring some background music for the film.

And, this month Connick will do a screen test after meeting with casting agent Juliet Taylor about a part in Puttnam’s new movie, “The Southern Belle.” The part calls for a Southerner who is tall, handsome and likes to sing. “That’s me,” Connick says smugly.

But, as hard as it is to believe, Connick claims he didn’t want to pursue the part at first. “I’ve had an ethical problem with acting because so many young actors are struggling to get this stuff, and if I want to I can act and I can get movie roles,” he says. “And I just hate it when actors decide to suddenly become musicians and record an album.”

So Connick talked to his wanna-be actor buddies to see what they thought of the Puttnam offer. “And they said, ‘Like, man, go for it.’ And I felt better about that then.”

In fact, he has been offered lots of acting roles, from soap operas to feature films and including many leads, ever since his first album, “Harry Connick Jr.” debuted in 1987 and his second, “20,” came out in November, and magazines as diverse as Elle and People and Seventeen wrote articles about him that coincided with his appearances on “The Today Show,” “CBS This Morning,” “The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson” and “Late Night With David Letterman.”

“Letterman’s people called my agency and asked me to be a regular on the show, which means I come on every three months and can’t do Arsenio Hall,” Connick explains. But the deal doesn’t rule out “The Pat Sajak Show,” where he is booked to appear Wednesday.

Then there is the overseas touring which his record company arranged in February to Japan and in March to London, Paris and Frankfurt. “It was like 13- and 14- and 15-year-old Japanese girls bringing roses up to the stage. And I mean a lot of them. And I was flabbergasted to get letters from young people saying, ‘I never really liked jazz. But if that’s jazz music you’re playing, then I like it. Where can I get some more?’

“And that makes me feel really good.”

But the staunch Catholic says it makes him sick to his stomach to finish a performance and find groupies waiting expectantly for him backstage. And not just because he has a girlfriend. “It totally turns me off to have women approach me like that, and I mean many times highly attractive women. It freaks me out it happens so much. I mean, I’m 21 years old and I’m at the height of my sexual peak. But what that’s going to do for me?”

Connick says he turns any such overtures down because “I’m struggling to be a good, ethical person. I don’t have to do the stuff that other people do.” That’s also why he says he has stopped drinking altogether, has never done drugs and wouldn’t even consider doing a sex scene in a movie no matter how much everyone told him how important it was to the story.

“My mother who passed away in 1981 always said, ‘Harry, don’t follow people. Be a leader.’ And it sounds kind of corny but that’s really want I want to do. I don’t want to be a trend.”