Nightline Playlist: Harry Connick Jr.

'Nobody Knows the Trouble I've Seen'

Harry Connick Jr. attends the world premiere of "Nights in Rodanthe," held at New York's Ziegfeld Theatre, Tuesday, Sept 23, 2008.

(Jennifer Graylock/AP Photo)

"Growing up in New Orleans, Louis Armstrong is the king," said Connick. "I mean, he is the guy that everybody wants to be."

Connick said Armstrong's famous song, "Nobody Knows the Trouble I've Seen," is inspiring because it shows how Armstrong overcame the adversity in his life.

"[Considering] what he had been through in his life, he had been the victim of racism, and many other issues of the time ... and you will not hear a greater trumpet song on recording," he said. "It's troubled and it's strained, and it was late in his life and it's wobbly and cracked sounding.

"It's one of those things where God put his hand on Louis Armstrong and said, 'OK, you are the one. So you handle the music for the rest of us,'" Connick said.

'On the Sunny Side of the Street'

Connick credits James Booker's song, "On the Sunny side of the Street" with drawing him to the piano.

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"James Booker was a New Orleans piano player and singer," he said, "and the finest of all of them in my opinion. James Booker was so unique and so ingenious in the way he approached the piano ... and it's in that style that I tried to pattern what I was doing. 'On the Sunny Side of the Street' is probably the single most influential piano music for me."

'Death on Two Legs'

"Freddie Mercury is one of my biggest heroes of all times," said Connick, "not only for his musical talent but his lack of inhibitions."

In the 1975 song "Death on Two Legs," most of the guitar parts were initially played on piano by Mercury, but it was his voice that inspired Connick.

"The very simple little triads that Freddie Mercury plays in the introduction -- the way he sings it, he just had no limits in his own mind as to what he could do vocally," he said.

"It sounded as if it were effortless the way Freddie sang, like his vibrato would kind of kick in sometimes and sometimes it wouldn't," Connick said. "The way he played piano seemed completely spontaneous, and clearly it wasn't."