Johnny Mercer

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For other persons of the same name, see John Mercer.

John Herndon "Johnny" Mercer (November 18, 1909 – June 25, 1976) is regarded as one of America's greatest songwriters.

[edit] Childhood

Born in Savannah, Georgia, on November 18, 1909, Mercer liked music as a small child. His aunt told him he was humming music when he was six-months old. He never had formal musical training but he listened to all the music he could and by the time he was 11 or 12 he had memorized almost all of the songs he had heard. He once asked his brother who the best songwriters were, and his brother said Irving Berlin, among the best of Tin Pan Alley.<ref name="wilk">*Wilk, Max (1997). They're Playing Our Song, First, Da Capo Press. ISBN 0-306-80746-7.</ref>

[edit] Career

Mercer moved to New York in 1928, when he was 19. His first few jobs were as an actor but he soon gravitated toward singing and lyric writing. He was eventually hired as a singer and lyricist for Paul Whiteman's Band. His first lyric appeared in a musical revue in 1930 and after than he met many writers and composers, including Hoagy Carmichael. Later he quit working altogether to concentrate on writing songs exclusively. He met Siggie Nordstrom who was recently widowed and forming a sister act with her sister Dagmar and the pair used several of his songs in their routine in 1939 at the Ritz in London.^{[citation needed]}

This was the golden age of the sophisticated popular song, like those of Cole Porter. Songs were put into revues without much regard for integrating the song into the plot. Mercer was generally a lyricist; to him the song was the thing. Mercer felt confined by the Tin Pan Alley formula which had long relegated authentic southern vernacular to comedy songs. Mercer was a naturally casual lyricist, preferring to use regional colloquialisms.<ref name="furia">Furia, kelly (1992). Poets of Tin Pan Alley. New York & Oxford: Oxford University Press. ISBN 0-19-507473-4.</ref> During the 1930s there was a shift in musical theatre from musical revues to musicals that used the song to further the plot. There was less of a demand for the pure stand-alone song. After the success of Oklahoma!, Broadway began to shut out lyricists like Mercer who thought in terms of the song rather than its integration into the show. When Mercer was offered a job in Hollywood to write songs and act in low-budget musicals for RKO, he took it. <ref>Gottfried, Martin (1984). Broadway Musicals. New York: Abradale Press. ISBN 0-8109-8060-6.</ref>

[edit] Hollywood years

It was only when Mercer moved to Hollywood in 1935 that his career was assured. His first big song "I'm an Old Cow Hand" was used by Bing Crosby in a film, and from there his demand as a lyicist took off. He found himself writing more and performing less.

In 1941 Mercer met an ideal musical collaborator in the form of Harold Arlen whose compositions mixed with jazz and blues provided Mercer's sophisticated, slangy lyrics a perfect musical vehicle. Now his lyrics began to display the combination of sophisticated wit and southern regional venacular that characterize some of his best songs. Their first hit was "Blues in the Night" (1941). They went on to craft "That Old Black Magic" (1942), "One for My Baby (and One More for the Road)" (1943), "Ac-Cent-Tchu-Ate the Positive" (1944), and "Come Rain Or Come Shine" (1946) among others.<ref name="furia">Furia, Philip (1992). Poets of Tin Pan Alley. New York & Oxford: Oxford University Press. ISBN 0-19-507473-4.</ref>

In Hollywood he was able to collaborate with a remarkable number of composers, including Richard Whiting, Harry Warren, Jerome Kern, Harold Arlen, Jimmy Van Heusen, Henry Mancini, Dorothy Fields, and Hoagy Carmichael. He was adaptable in his style, listening carefully and absorbing a tune and then transforming it into his own style. He said he preferred to have the music first, taking it home and working on it. He claimed composers had no problem with this method as long as he came back with the lyrics.

After the death of his friend and collaborator, Paul Whiting, he began working with Harry Warren, one of the best composers in the film business. He also had an immensely productive collaborative relationship with Harold Arlen on and off starting in the late 1930s.

Mercer was often asked to write new lyrics to already popular tunes. The lyrics to "Laura," "Midnight Sun," and "Satin Doll" were all written after the melodies had become hits. He was also asked to write English lyrics to foreign songs, the most famous example being "Autumn Leaves," based on the French "Les Feuilles Mortes."

Occasionally, Mercer wrote both music and lyrics. "Something's Gotta Give" is probably the best-known song in this category.

Mercer wrote for some MGM films, which include Seven Brides for Seven Brothers (1954) and Merry Andrew (1958). He wrote the lyrics to "Moon River" for Audrey Hepburn in Breakfast at Tiffany's. (Henry Mancini wrote the music.) In 1969, Mercer helped publishers Abe Olman and Howie Richmond found the National Academy of Popular Music's Songwriters Hall of Fame.

A good indication of Mercer's high esteem is the fact that, in 1964, he became the only lyricist to have his work recorded as a volume of Ella Fitzgerald's celebrated 'Songbook' albums for the Verve label. But he always remained humble about his work, attributing much to luck and timing. He was fond of telling the story of how he was offered the job of doing the lyrics for The Sandpiper on which he worked, only to have the producer turn his lyrics down. The producer got another lyricist and the result was "The Shadow of Your Smile" which became a huge hit.<ref name="wilk">Wilk, Max (1997). They're Playing Our Song. New York, N.Y.: Da Capo Press. ISBN 0-306-80746-7.</ref>

[edit] Southern roots

Born in the South, Mercer grew up listening to records of Tin Pan Alley songs but also to so-called "race" records, marketed to blacks. His later songs merged his southern roots with his urban knowledge of sophisticated songwriters. It was his southern roots that enable him to be one of the few lyicists able to skillfully write lyrics set to the jazz melodies of composers such as Hoagy Carmichael. For years Mercer had to ignore those roots to fit the requirements of Tin Pan Alley standard terms. "Moon River", with its remarkable phrase "my huckleberry friend" would never have passed muster in the Tin Pan Alley years.^{[citation needed]}

[edit] Singing style

Well-regarded also as a singer, with a folksy singing quality, he was a natural for his own songs such as "Ac-Cent-Tchu-Ate The Positive", "On the Atchison, Topeka and the Santa Fe", "One for My Baby (and One More for the Road)", and "Lazybones." He was considered a first-rate performer of his own work.<ref name="wilk"/>

It has been said that he penned "One for My Baby (and One More for the Road)", one of the great torch laments of all times, on a napkin while sitting at the bar at P. J. Clarke's when Tommy Joyce was the bartender. The next day he called Tommy to apologize for the line "So, set 'em up, Joe," "I couldn't get your name to rhyme." Mercer, like Cole Porter before him, was more interested in the words than the emotion in lyric. This may be why "One for My Baby (and One More for the Road)" was sung more effectively by him than other singers who often turned it into a tear-jerker.

[edit] Capitol Records

The war years saw Mercer's beginnings as an entertainment tycoon. In the 1940s Mercer was introduced by the Nordstrom Sisters to backers and in 1942, he was part of the founding trio of Capitol Records which became an industry giant. He started Capitol because he was not satisfied with recording quality in the then current crop of western studios and tired of travelling all the way to NY. One more brilliant thing he did was bury two facing seventy-five foot horns under the Capitol building parking lot to create an echo chamber effect in the studio. The quality of Capitols' records were the direct result of the effort and skill of Mr. Mercer. While running Capitol, Mercer's skills as a talent scout attracted Nat Cole, Stan Kenton, Jo Stafford, Peggy Lee and Margaret Whiting and others to the label. Of course, he released many of his hits on his own label.

[edit] Posthumous success

In his last year, Mercer became extremely fond of pop singer Barry Manilow, in part because Manilow's first hit record was of a song titled "Mandy," which was also the name of Mercer's daughter. After Mercer's death, his widow, Ginger Mehan Mercer, arranged to give some unfinished lyrics he had written to Manilow to possibly develop into complete songs. Among these was a piece titled "When October Goes," a melancholy remembrance of lost love. Manilow applied his own melody to the lyric and issued it as a single in 1984, when it became a top 10 Adult Contemporary hit in the United States. The song has since become a jazz standard, with notable recordings by Rosemary Clooney, Nancy Wilson, and Megon McDonough, among other performers.

[edit] Academy Awards

Mercer won four Academy Awards for Best Song:

• "On the Atchison, Topeka and the Santa Fe" (1946) (music by Harry Warren) for The Harvey Girls
• "In The Cool, Cool, Cool Of The Evening" (1951) (music by Hoagy Carmichael) for Here Comes The Groom
• "Moon River" (1961) (music by Henry Mancini) for Breakfast at Tiffany's
• "Days of Wine and Roses" (1962) (music by Henry Mancini) for Days of Wine and Roses

[edit] Songs

Lyrics by Mercer, unless noted.

He wrote many other songs, some of which have entered the Great American Songbook:

• "Lazybones" (1933) (music by Hoagy Carmichael)
• "P.S. I Love You" (1934) (music by Gordon Jenkins)
• "Goody Goody" (1936) (music by Matty Maineck)
• "I'm an Old Cowhand from the Rio Grande" (1936)
• "Hooray for Hollywood" (1937) (music by Richard A. Whiting)
• "Too Marvelous for Words" (1937) (music by Richard Whiting)
• "You Must Have Been a Beautiful Baby" (1938) (music by Harry Warren)
• "Jeepers Creepers" (1938) (music by Harry Warren)
• "And The Angels Sing" (1939) (music by Ziggy Elman)
• "Day In - Day Out" (1939) (music by Rube Bloom)
• "Fools Rush In" (1940) (music by Rube Bloom)
• "Blues In The Night" (1941) (music by Harold Arlen)
• "I Remember You" (1941) (music by Victor Schertzinger)
• "This Time The Dream's On Me" (1941) (music by Harold Arlen)
• "Hit The Road To Dreamland" (1942) (music by Harold Arlen)
• "That Old Black Magic" (1942) (music by Harold Arlen)
• "Skylark" (1942) (music by Hoagy Carmichael)
• "Dearly Beloved" (1942) (music by Jerome Kern
• "I'm Old Fashioned" (1943) (music by Jerome Kern)
• "One for My Baby (and One More for the Road)" (1943) (music by Harold Arlen)
• "Dream" (1943) (words and music by Johnny Mercer)
• "Ac-Cent-Tchu-Ate the Positive" (1944) (music by Harold Arlen)
• "Out of This World" (1945) (music by Harold Arlen)
• "Laura" (1945) (music by David Raksin)
• "Trav'lin' Light" (1946) (music by Jimmy Mundy and James Osborne "Trummy" Young)
• "Any Place I Hang My Hat Is Home" (1946) (music by Harold Arlen)
• "Come Rain Or Come Shine" (1946) (music by Harold Arlen)
• "Autumn Leaves" (1947) (music by Joseph Kosma)
• "Glow Worm" (1952) (music Paul Lincke)
• "Satin Doll" (1953) (music by Duke Ellington)
• "Charade" (1953) (music by Henry Mancini)
• "Something's Gotta Give" (1954)
• "Moon River" (1961) (music by Henry Mancini)
• "Midnight Sun" (music by Lionel Hampton and Sonny Burke)
• "Summer Wind" (1965) (music by Henry Mayer)
• "Drinking Again" (with Doris Tauber)
• "P.S. I Love You" (music by Gordon Jenkins)
• "When October Goes" (music by Barry Manilow)

[edit] Samples

• Download sample of "And the Angels Sing" by Benny Goodman and Martha Tilton. Music by Ziggy Elman and lyrics by Mercer.

[edit] Other facts

• Mercer was a direct descendant of Revolutionary War General Hugh Mercer, and through him was also a distant cousin of General George S. Patton.
• Another Mercer's ancestors was General Hugh W. Mercer in the American Civil War.
• His family home in Savannah was later the home of Jim Williams, whose trial for murder was the centerpiece of John Berendt's book Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil.
• His mother was Lillian Barbara Ciucevich. Born in America she was the daugther of Croatian migrants who came to America in the 1870s.
• He was honored by the United States Postal Service with his portrait placed on a stamp in 1996.
• His star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame at 1628 Vine Street<ref name="nnnb">nnnb: Johnny Mercer. Retrieved on November 15, 2006.</ref> is a block away from the Capitol Records building at 1750 Vine Street.
• He died in Bel Air, California.
• There is a theatre named after him in Savannah's Civic Center.
• There is a pier named after him in Wilmington N.C.

[edit] References