Singer and actor Harry Connick Jr. lost his mother at 13, but he still measures his own parenting against the love she gave him.
“She showed me how to love myself and made me feel that I had something to show and something to offer,” Connick said in an Oct. 2 interview with Parents, explaining how his mother’s encouragement helped him believe he had something worth sharing with the world.
Now a father of three daughters with his wife, former model and actress Jill Goodacre, Connick keeps returning to the example both parents set. He told Parents that they taught him to respect other people, marriage and the responsibility of raising children.
“I think about them a lot and ask myself what they would do,” he reflected, describing how he tries to live up to their example.
That example began well before any hit records. His parents took him to jazz clubs and concerts, encouraged his interests and smiled back at him from the audience when he performed, he recalled.
His mother’s confidence gave him room to develop his individuality, Connick explained, without confusing belief in his gifts with arrogance. What she offered was more personal than a prediction that he would become famous: She helped him recognize that he had something to contribute.
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He honors her in Babe: Elaboratio A Tribute to My Mother, released Sept. 29 through Harper Celebrate. The book combines his memories with the music he composed for Anita-Francis Livingston Connick, known as Babe, who died from ovarian cancer.
One wish of hers took decades to fulfill. She wanted to see her son perform at Carnegie Hall, and he finally made his debut there on May 22, 2026, what would have been her 100th birthday.
He had tried to make it happen as a child, too. In a May interview with TODAY.com, Connick recalled calling the venue at 10 to ask if he could play there, only to learn he had reached the box office.
This time, he deliberately saved his first visit for the performance itself, telling Parents he did not even rehearse inside the hall. Looking back on the night, he remembered the connection to his mother more clearly than the performance.
“I just remember being with my mom and feeling like it was so profound,” he said.
The tribute also includes an orchestral album released Sept. 25. Its three parts follow Babe’s life through New York, Morocco, where she met her husband, and New Orleans, where she raised her family.
Connick approached those earlier chapters as a son imagining what he never witnessed, not as a historian reconstructing every detail. He told Parents that he built on the stories his mother shared with him.
For him, the project reaches beyond one family’s memories. He hopes mothers reading it recognize the lasting importance of the love they give their children, even without a concert or a book to celebrate it.
“Even though I only had my mom for 13 years, the love that she had for me and the love I had for her was the most powerful thing I’ve ever felt,” he told Parents.
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