“Jill”
Harry Connick, Jr.
Blue Light Red Light
1991, Columbia Records
The Drive: While Blue Light Red Light certainly doesn’t compare with the masterful swagger Frank Sinatra treated 1957’s Come Fly With Me, or the sophistication Ella Fitzgerald offered her Ella Swings Brightly With Nelson album (for which she received a Best Solo Vocal Performance GRAMMY in 1962), it is an ambitious and worthwhile achievement, especially given the fact that the twenty-four-year-old wrote or co-wrote all of the tunes, played piano throughout, and arranged and orchestrated the entirety of the album. The obvious comparison, Randy Newman, was a year older when he penned, played piano, arranged, and orchestrated the songs on his debut record in 1968, Randy Newman Creates Something New Under The Sun. If Blue Light doesn’t deliver the headiness of that or any other Newman album, it’s because it doesn’t strive to, but “Jill” can just about hold its own against a Newman classic like “Living Without You” and “I Think It’s Going To Rain Today,” just in terms of its fragility and the utter grip it keeps on the listener.
