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On Sunday, Feb. 23, 2003, singer Norah Jones walked away with five
Grammy® Awards, including one for Song of the Year, which
went to her "Don’t Know Why" writer, Jesse Harris
-- son of ATWT veteran actress and one-time writer, Marie Masters
(Susan). A few days after the ceremony, SoapCity caught up with
the proud mom, for all the scoop on her now famous son!
SoapCityAlina: What went through your head immediately after
you heard your son’s name announced as the winner?
Marie Masters: It took a moment for it to register. I was sitting
with my ex-husband and his wife, and my ex-husband had just told
me that the way the evening is constructed is they usually have
performers performing right around the time they’re going to
get an award. And Bruce Springsteen sang and his band performed
right before they announced the Song of the Year category.
So, when that category came up and B.B. King came up to announce
it, we all groaned. We all thought, "Oh, no, that means Bruce
Springsteen is the winner." And then we were all thinking,
"Bruce Springsteen -- he’s great! He’s one of the
best American, rock guys going." And even Jesse said, "I
don’t have a chance against that guy!" And then right
before he read the winner, B.B. King took that long pause and said,
"Jesse Harris." And we went, "Who?" And then
we just got up and started screaming, "That’s my son!
That’s my son!" It was just an incredible moment to be
in Madison Square Garden with I don’t know how many thousands
of people, it was so surreal. I talked to both kids afterwards,
my daughter, Jenny (ex-Emily) and my son and we were all saying,
it’s a very difficult thing to process. It doesn’t seem
very real, because you win that one night and the next day everybody
goes back to work, picks up the laundry, life goes on. My son said
a very funny thing. He said, "Mom, you’re going to have
to watch it on TV to make it seem real." I taped it and he’s
right, I’m just going to have to watch it on television, because
sitting in the Garden and experiencing all of it at the same time,
it was unbelievable. I was in shock. I was speechless, my mouth
kept hanging open. I looked like somebody hit me over the head with
a baseball bat. And I’m still in shock. Because the music business
is a very hard business. And my son has been working really hard,
struggling, working for 10 years. And you just accept that. It’s
a hard business and you keep working, writing and performing and
doing your craft, and you don’t expect anything like what happened
last Sunday night to happen because it’s just not part of it.
SCA: Do you think having a mother who’s an actress prepared
Jesse for the harsh realities of the music business?
MM: I think it’s made him very level-headed about it. He
knows that it’s great that he’s having a great time now,
but he’s really busy, and it doesn’t seem quite real.
People are calling him and e-mailing him. It’s just a very
odd thing. He knows that it’s great when things work out, but
most of the time it about perfecting your craft and working hard
and showing up.
SCA: You won an Emmy® Award last year, at the Garden, as
part of the ATWT Writing Team. Did you think about that before and
during the awards?
MM: Walking in the Garden this time, I was remembering walking
down some of those halls last year with my Emmy®, and I was
thinking, "Wow, this is just extraordinary." It’s
so funny, too, because for weeks I’ve been down on my knees
praying and wishing on every star and crossing my fingers and my
toes and I’ve been begging for my son to win that award. And
then he finally did, and it was like, "What? Did that really
happen?" You know he brought me this good luck charm from Japan
in December, so I had all my lucky charms with me. My lucky 50-dollar
bill I found on 9th Avenue, my ticket from last year’s Emmys®.
But that doesn’t mean anything has to happen. And it did!
SCA: So, as the mom, do we have you to thank for his musical
success? Did you drag him to his first piano lesson?
MM: He took piano lessons and he didn’t like them very
much, so he stopped taking them. And then, in high school, he suddenly
said that he was going to sing and play the harmonica with a friend
of his in a talent show. And we all thought that was really cute.
I didn’t even know he could play the harmonica! So then he
gets up and he sings with his friend and suddenly, he started calling
these clubs downtown. There used to be a lot more of them where
young performers could call and then they would appear on these
open-night clubs. Later, Jesse taught himself to play guitar, and
he would sing cover songs, like Bob Dylan. And then he started writing
songs. And who knew he had talent? I’m a musical zero. When
he writes songs now, he calls me on the phone and plays them for
me, and I guess it’s because I’m so unschooled, anything
that sticks out to me, he pays attention to. If something is not
clear to me in a song, we talk about it. But usually I just find
his songs so amazing, so emotional, filled with such imagery and
so clear. He’s always written really beautiful songs.
SCA: You may not be musical, but you are an Emmy®-Award
winning writer. Do you think that contributed to Jesse’s song
being so full of imagery and poetry?
MM: Maybe. But he’s always been a really serious reader.
He’s read the Greek and Roman classics, all the great literature,
he’s always giving me books to read. He’s the serious
reader in the family and he loves the words. He loves great writing;
he has a real appreciation for it. That’s all I can say about
my writing influence. Although a shrink friend of mine said, "Hey,
take a little credit. Moms are always being blamed for everything,
you might as well take a little credit for a change!" So, I’m
attempting to, but there’s not really much I can claim.
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