Harry talks on a cell phone, one leg splayed beneath a long table, wearing a white designer undershirt, baggy shorts, Nikes and a New Orleans Saints cap, bill turned backward. On his right hand he's got a scary, square-faced ring with the initials "DWI" ("Dealing With It").

Last night was a little rocky. The tour bus driver didn't have his papers in order, so they had to wait two hours at the Canadian border. Harry has barely slept. He's a little hoarse, wondering if it's going to affect his show. He took a shower -- "going 70 miles an hour," he laughs -- before finally falling into the double bed at the back of the tour bus. He also has a broken left thumb, the result of an overenthusiastic basketball encounter with his very tall second alto player, Jimmy Greene, a week ago. Since 8 o'clock this morning, he's been working on a new arrangement of Fats Waller's "Jitterbug Waltz," a three-tenor feature for Greene, Jerry Weldon, and Ned Goold.

"I'm usually here before the crew gets here," says the cocky, bare-shouldered, 6'2" bandleader, with an accent whose New Orleans drawl has gathered some Manhattan inflections since he moved there 13 years ago. "Come on. Let me show you what I've been up to."

In the winery's cool, oak aging room, where 500 barrels are racked, stands a huge console that folds out like a steamer trunk, on end. Inside, there's a computer with the music writing program Finale; a piano keyboard on a sliding drawer; a complete stereo system, with CD player, tape deck, Genelec speakers and equalizer; and a stack of DA-88 DAT decks, to record live shows from the board.

"As a bandleader, you have to do the work. You got 16 guys out there, you want to give them something interesting to do. I've sort of fallen into a routine of trying to write a chart a day."

A chart a day?

Can this be the same happy-go-lucky, style-over-substance fashion plate who enraged jazz writers eight years ago when he donned the Sinatra mantle before learning to sing, causing one wag to dub him Frank Synopsis? The guy who made millions with an attitude from the 1989 film When Harry Met Sally then dared to claim that he, like his Crescent City boyhood chum, Wynton Marsalis, was carrying the torch for the One True Jazz?

Absolutely, as Connick himself often replies: This is Harry. But it's not the Harry Connick you know from trendy media sketches that have praised or panned him over the years. Nor is it the Harry you probably know from his early albums, which only hinted at the fellow he has become. No, this is a much more mature musician -- and human being -- still ambitious, and with perhaps an overly grand sense of himself, but also reflective, serious, incredibly hard-working and determined to make a mark on the music he loves over the long haul, not only as a singer, but as a pianist, arranger and composer.

When Connick burst on the scene in 1987, with a self-titled piano album for Columbia Records, he was only 19, but he had already been performing on Bourbon Street for six years. A formal student of Ellis Marsalis and a casual one of James Booker, Connick had mastered traditional piano styles and was well-known for his impression of Louis Armstrong. It was his second album, 20, on which he sang, that caught the attention of director Rob Reiner, who asked Harry to sing on the sound track for When Harry Met Sally. The film -- and Connick's subsequent big band album, featuring the film's popular theme, "It Had To Be You" -- became huge hits. Since then, the singer has earned one gold, three platinum, and four multiplatinum albums, two Grammy awards (Best Jazz Vocal Performance, for When Harry Met Sally and We Are In Love), a gold-certified video, Singin' And Swingin', and has appeared in seven films. He has his first lead role in the upcoming Letters From A Wayward Son. His current big band album, Come By Me, on which he did all of the arranging, hit No. 1 on the jazz charts in June.

But success in the marketplace is often related in inverse proportion to respect from peers and critics. Over the course of a typical day on tour, Harry talked about this issue, touching on his flowering as an arranger, his growth as a big band singer, the perennial conflict between singers and players, his New Orleans background, the challenges of being a bandleader and what drives him as a musician.

"Everyone in the band has flat panel screens and their own computer and monitor on stage," he explains enthusiastically, "so it eliminates the need for sheet music. They can all make their own edits and dynamic markings and notes."

Connick designed this system himself, including the wrap-around, brushed-aluminum "cockpits" where each player sits. He likes challenges. That's what led him to arranging in the first place, back in 1993.

"Marc Shaiman was going to do the arrangements for this Christmas record (When My Heart Finds Christmas), and two weeks before, he flaked and left me with no charts. I said 'Oh my god, what am I going to do?' I mean, I've studied a lot of theory, but I didn't know the first thing about writing for an orchestra. I remember, I was sitting in a hotel room in Zurich, and I went out and got music paper and pencils and I just started to write on my bed. I wrote for two solid weeks. When the parts got handed out -- it was a song called 'What Child Is This?' -- and I raised my hand [to cue the band], it was like somebody just electrified me with 100,000 volts. I felt like I was flying. That was when I said, 'You know what? I don't need anybody to write my lyrics. I don't need anybody to write my orchestrations, or play or sing or produce, or anything. I'm doing it all. It's going to be a lot of work, but when people buy Harry Connick's record, they're going to get Harry Connick's record. And until the day I die, that's what I'm going to do.'"

Connick often draws upon his New Orleans background, which means groove, shuffle, clave and cross-rhythms galore. On the new album, he sets "Cry Me A River" as a Crescent City dirge. A snappy saxophone fill on Henry Mancini's "Charade," on the other hand, recalls Jimmie Lunceford's double-time.

"That's not double-time, man," he corrects. "That's triplet time. Let me show you. This is the regular time" -- he beats out a straight 4/4 with his left hand -- "then you play triplets" -- a three-against-two figure sounds from his right -- "then you phrase the triplets in groups of four." A duple meter emerges, in which three sets of four quarter notes, played in triplet time, ride over two bars of regular time.

Connick taught himself by a process of trial and error. And while he realizes he's luckier than most to have a live band to try out his ideas -- "I feel like Felix Mendelssohn, who had his own orchestra when he was a kid, because he was so rich" -- as with many people for whom things come easily, he is impatient with novices who ask for advice.

"You just gotta do it, man. You write, you learn. What's the big mystery about it? Nobody showed me any rules on how to do this stuff. Even the questions are supposed to be obvious to you."

"Hey, I hate singers," Connick laughs. "They don't know anything. But the thing with me was, nobody thought of me as a singer, because I started singing and playing at the same time. Whenever Wynton would come to town, I would sit in with him. I hung out with Kenny Kirkland. They knew of me as a piano player."

Harry's players don't have any trouble respecting him, either.

Says bassist Ben Wolfe, who recently left Diana Krall but played with Harry early on, "Harry is an all-around musician. He does it all. I mean, he's writing a chart every day for this band."

"Harry is different," agrees trombonist Craig Klein, a N'awlins boy who also played with the original Connick big band. "He's not like other singers. He can play every instrument up here."

"I want to have a battle of the bands with Wynton," says Harry, whose braggadocio and high-school basketball competitiveness is highly reminiscent of Marsalis.

"They're sounding pretty good these days, Harry," I caution. "In my opinion, it wouldn't be much of a battle. He's got Joe Temperley, Victor Goines..."

"I got the new young drumming sensation -- Arthur Latin."

"He's got Marcus Printup, Ryan Kisor, Ted Nash..."

"I got Ned Goold, Jerry Weldon, Leroy Jones, Joe Magnarelli... I tell you, man, it would be so much fun. Then, if it was an even battle, well" -- he smiles broadly -- "I pick up the mic, baby, and we tip it in our favor, once again."

"But then Wynton would start telling jokes."

"Like I said, in our favor once again."

Ironically, Wynton plays piano (as well as trumpet) on Harry's new album, 30, an all-instrumental effort due in November. Connick does a non-vocal album every five years, and laments that he doesn't get to play piano more.

In the meantime, Connick's working on his singing, which he readily admits used to be pretty thin.

"I've always had a pretty good low end," he avers, "but I've never liked my high register. Now it's starting to sound good to me, in my ear. I like getting up there, and I'm holding notes, I'm getting stronger.

"Singing in front of a big band is a very specialized skill, which I'm figuring out on a nightly basis. First of all, there's the amount of people playing behind you, which leads to intonation issues. Then there's the power that it takes to drive them. You give me four bars with the piano and I will have established a strong enough rhythmic groove to get them going. But as I get older, my voice is getting more of a cut to it, and I'm starting to get to the point where I can feel what I'm doing vocally is changing what they're doing."

Band members drift in -- New Orleanian trombonists Lucien Barbarin and Mark Mullins; saxophonists Goold, Weldon and Greene; trumpeters Magnarelli and Jones. After some level checks, and run-throughs of "In the Still Of The Night" and "I Concentrate On You," Harry calls "Cocktails For Two," a chart with a godawful section of "triplet time." It falls apart after a few bars.

Connick sighs.

"It's so obvious," he rails. "It's not that hard. Just relax. OK, let's try it again."

Wolfe lays down the four-four, strong, so the band can get the time into their heads, before abandoning it.

Another train wreck.

Connick rehearses the brass alone, then the saxes, tries it again, but the band still bobbles it.

"Thanks a lot for the hours of work that I spent doin' this," he says, with calm disgust, and walks off stage. "That's never going to be played again."

"Being a bandleader is an interesting thing," he confides later, back among the wine barrels. "You want to be one of them. But you're the guy writing the checks. I can't get them in here at 10 o'clock in the morning to rehearse, I don't think that would be fair. But it would be stellar if they played this stuff like it's supposed to be played. Their level of musicianship is so high. We are the Harry Connick Jr. Big Band, and we are perfect, and perfect means that the imperfection has to come from spontaneity, not from sloppiness."

He stops for a second, then laughs.

"But the music is hard! This is not going to ruin my day."

Weldon eyeballs an eight-bar section of 16th-notes.

"What's the tempo?"

Harry snaps out a quick pace.

"And we gotta memorize this?"

"Right. 'The Three Tenors.' Up front. You probably want to learn it from the disk though, don't you, rather than putting the paper between you and the music."

"That way I can groove it into my brain."

"You have Finale on your laptop, right?"

"Yeah."

"I'll e-mail it to you."

After Harry leaves, Weldon says, "He's so quick, man. He's way ahead of us -- all the time."

Harry connects immediately with the crowd. And true to his promise, though he shows some signs of fatigue, at first, there's a new vibrancy and frisson to his voice, and the highs have filled out, bigtime. Over the next two hours, he gives us a little of everything -- a crooning "I Could Write A Book," a heartbreaking "Danny Boy," a darkly modern piano trio take on "That Old Devil Moon," a funk number from his Star Turtle album, Louis Prima's version of "Pennies From Heaven" ("sunshine and macaroni") and a rhythmically complex arrangement of Cole Porter's "In The Still Of The Night," which the band fumbles, and has to start over, twice. Unruffled, he pulls out all the stops, banging out a "Sweet Georgia Brown" that would have pleased Professor Longhair, then leaps to the top of the grand, does a shimmy and a shake, runs over to the drum set, takes a turn there, then hoists Wolfe's bass over his head, and thumps out a chorus. By the time he's finished, Ste. Michelle has turned into Mardi Gras, and Harry has planted kisses on a half a dozen women.

"I can't do a lot of things," Harry reflects, "but I can make people think I'm singing about myself. That's the way I connect with people. I completely respect the crowd. And I respect the fact that they are paying money to come hear me."

After the show, a few stragglers, mostly women, wait by the chateau, hoping to catch a glimpse or an autograph. Harry is still working, shaking hands with some special guests, turning up his Louisiana charm. "I like being famous," Harry says ingenuously, sipping bottled water in the upstairs lounge (he drinks no alcohol). "Stay home if you don't want to be recognized. You want people to come hear you play, you have to do the work.

"Where did my work ethic come from? I think that it's inherited as some sort of personality trait, a by-product of an ego thing, of wanting to know that you are the best possible at what you do, however subjective it is. Oftentimes I wish I were an athlete, where every night I could go into a locker room and there would be a score saying whether I won or whether I lost."

Tonight, at least, there doesn't seem to be any question. Harry Connick Jr. is on a winning streak, and he's headed for the playoffs.