Everything about Johnny Mercer totally explained
John Herndon "Johnny" Mercer (
November 18,
1909 –
June 25,
1976) was a popular American
songwriter and
singer. As a songwriter, he's best known as a lyricist but also composed music. He was also a popular singer who recorded his own songs as well as those written by others. From the mid-1930s through the mid-1950s, many of the songs Mercer wrote and performed were among the most popular hits of the time. He wrote the lyrics to more than a thousand songs, including compositions for movies and Broadway shows. He received nineteen Academy Award nominations. Mercer was also a co-founder of
Capitol Records.
Childhood
Johnny Mercer was born in
Savannah,
Georgia to George Armstrong Mercer, prominent attorney and real estate developer, and Lillian Ciucevich, George Mercer’s secretary and then second wife, the daughter of Croatian-Irish immigrants who came to America in the 1850s. Lillian's father was a merchant seaman who ran the Union blockade during the U.S. Civil War. Mercer was George's fourth son, first by Lillian. His great-grandfather was Confederate General
Hugh Weedon Mercer and he was a direct descendant of
Revolutionary War General
Hugh Mercer, a Scottish soldier-physician who died at the Battle of Princeton. Mercer was also a distant cousin of General
George S. Patton. The
Mercer House in Savannah was built by General Hugh Weedon Mercer in 1860, 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, although neither the General nor Johnny ever lived there.
Mercer liked music as a small child and attributed his musical talent to his mother, who would sing sentimental ballads. Mercer's father also sang, mostly old Scottish songs. His aunt told him he was humming music when he was six months old and later she took him to see minstrel and vaudeville shows where he heard “coon songs” and ragtime. The family’s summer home “Vernon View” was on the tidal waters and Mercer’s long summers there among mossy trees, saltwater marshes, and soft, starry nights inspired him years later.
Mercer’s exposure to black music was perhaps unique among the white songwriters of his generation. As a child, Mercer had African-American playmates and servants, and he listened to the fishermen and vendors about him, who spoke and sang in the
Creole dialect known as “Geechee”. He was also attracted to black church services. Mercer later stated, “Songs always fascinated me more than anything”. He never had formal musical training but was singing in a choir by six and at eleven or twelve he'd memorized almost all of the songs he'd heard and he'd become curious about who had written them. He once asked his brother who the best songwriter was, and his brother said
Irving Berlin, among the best of
Tin Pan Alley.
Despite his early exposure to music, Mercer’s talent was clearly in creating the words and singing, not playing music, though early on he hoped to become a composer. In addition to the lyrics Mercer memorized, he was an avid reader and wrote adventure stories. His attempts to play the trumpet and piano were not successful, however, and he never could read musical scores with any facility, relying instead on his own notational system.
As a teenager in the Jazz Era, he was a ”product of his age”. He hunted for records in the black section of Savannah and played such early black jazz greats as
Ma Rainey,
Bessie Smith, and
Louis Armstrong. His father owned the first car in town, and Mercer’s teenage social life was enhanced by his driving privilege, which sometimes verged on recklessness. The family would motor to the mountains near
Asheville, North Carolina to escape the Savannah heat and there Mercer learned to dance (from
Arthur Murray himself) and to flirt with Southern belles, his natural sense of rhythm helping him on both accounts.
Mercer attended Woodberry Forest boys prep school until 1927. Though not a top student, he was active in literary and poetry societies and as a humor writer for the school’s publications. In addition, his exposure to classic literature augmented his already rich store of vocabulary and phraseology. He began to scribble ingenious, sometimes strained rhymed phrases for later use. Mercer was also the class clown and a prankster, and member of the “hop” committee that booked musical entertainment on campus.
Already somewhat of an authority on jazz, Mercer's yearbook stated, “No orchestra or new production can be authoritatively termed ‘good’ until Johnny’s stamp of approval has been placed upon it. His ability to ‘get hot’ under all conditions and at all times is uncanny”. Mercer began to write songs, an early effort being ‘’Sister Susie, Strut Your Stuff.” and quickly learned the powerful effect songs had on girls.
Given his family’s proud history and association with
Princeton, New Jersey and
Princeton University, Mercer was destined for school there until his father’s financial setbacks in the late 1920’s changed those plans. He went to work in his father’s recovering business, collecting rent and running errands, but soon grew bored with the routine and with Savannah, and looked to escape.
Starting out
Mercer moved to New York in
1928, when he was 19. The music he loved--jazz and blues--was booming in Harlem and Broadway was bursting with musicals and revues from
George Gershwin,
Cole Porter, and
Irving Berlin. Vaudeville, though beginning to fade, was still a strong musical presence. Mercer’s first few jobs were as a bit actor (billed as John Mercer). Holed up in a Greenwich Village apartment with plenty of time on his hands and a beat-up piano to play, Mercer soon returned to singing and lyric writing. He secured a day job at a brokerage house and sang at night. Pooling his meager income with that of his roommates, Mercer managed to keep going, sometimes on little more than oatmeal. One night he dropped in on
Eddie Cantor backstage to offer a comic song, but although Cantor didn’t use the song, he began encouraging Mercer’s career. Mercer's first lyric, for the song
Out of Breath and Scared to Death of You, composed by friend Everett Miller, appeared in a musical revue
The Garrick Gaieties in 1930. Mercer met his future wife at the show, chorus girl Ginger Meehan. Meehan had earlier been one of the many chorus girls pursued by the young crooner
Bing Crosby. Through Miller’s father, an executive at the famous publisher T. B. Harms, Mercer's first song was published. It was recorded by
Joe Venuti and his New Yorkers.
The 20-year-old Mercer began to hang out with other songwriters and to learn the trade. He traveled to California to undertake a lyric writing assignment for the musical
Paris in the Spring and met his idols
Bing Crosby and
Louis Armstrong. Mercer found the experience sobering and realized that he much preferred free-standing lyric writing to writing on demand for musicals. Upon his return, he got a job as staff lyricist for Miller Music for a $25 dollar-a-week draw which give him a base income and enough prospects to win over and marry Ginger in 1931. The new Mrs. Mercer quit the chorus line and became a seamstress, and to save money the newlyweds moved in with Ginger’s mother in Brooklyn.
In 1932, Mercer won a contest to sing with the
Paul Whiteman orchestra, but it didn't help his situation significantly. Mercer then apprenticed with
Yip Harburg on the score for
Americana, a Depression-flavored revue famous for
Brother, Can You Spare a Dime? (not a Mercer effort), which gave Mercer invaluable training. After several songs which didn’t catch fire, Mercer’s fortunes improved dramatically with a chance pairing with Indiana-born
Hoagy Carmichael, already famous for the standard
Star Dust, who was intrigued by the “young, bouncy butterball of a man from Georgia”. The two spent a year laboring over
Lazy Bones, which became a hit one week after its first radio broadcast, and each received a large royalty check of $1250. A regional song in pseudo-black dialect, it captured the mood of the times, especially in rural America. Mercer became a member of ASCAP and a recognized “brother” in the
Tin Pan Alley fraternity, receiving congratulations from
Irving Berlin,
George Gershwin, and
Cole Porter among others. Paul Whiteman lured Mercer back to his orchestra (to sing, write comic skits and compose songs), temporarily breaking up the working team with Carmichael.
During the golden age of sophisticated popular song of the late Twenties and early Thirties, songs were put into revues with minimal regard for plot integration. During the 1930s, there was a shift from revues to stage and movie musicals using song to further the plot. Demand diminished accordingly for the pure stand-alone songs that Mercer preferred. Thus, although he'd established himself in the New York music world, when Mercer was offered a job in Hollywood to compose songs and perform in low-budget musicals for RKO, he accepted and followed idol
Bing Crosby west.
Hollywood years
It was only when Mercer moved to
Hollywood in
1935 that his career was assured.
Writing songs for movies offered two distinct advantages. The use of sensitive microphones for recording and of the lip-synching of pre-recorded songs liberated songwriters from dependence on the long vowel endings and long sustained notes required for live performance. Performers such as
Fred Astaire and
Ginger Rogers could now sing more conversationally and more nonchalantly. Mercer, as a singer, was attuned to this shift and his style fit the need perfectly.
Mercer’s first Hollywood assignment wasn't the Astaire-Rogers vehicle of which he'd dreamed but a B-movie college musical,
Old Man Rhythm, to which he contributed two undistinguished songs and even worse acting. His next project,
To Beat the Band, was another flop, but it did lead to a meeting and a collaboration with
Fred Astaire on the moderately successful Astaire song
I’m Building Up to an Awful Let-Down.
Though all but overwhelmed by the glitter of Hollywood, Mercer found his beloved jazz and nightlife lacking. As he wrote, “Hollywood was never much of a night town. Everybody had to get up too early...the movie people were in bed with the chickens (or each other).” Mercer was now in Bing Crosby’s hard-drinking circle and enjoyed Crosby’s company and hipster talk. Unfortunately, Mercer also began to drink more at parties and was prone to vicious outbursts when under the influence of alcohol, contrasting sharply with his ordinarily genial and gentlemanly behavior.
Mercer’s first big Hollywood song
I'm an Old Cowhand from the Rio Grande was inspired by a road trip through Texas (he wrote both the music and the lyric). It was performed by Crosby in the film
Rhythm on the Range in 1936, and from thereon the demand for Mercer as a lyricist took off. His second hit that year was
Goody Goody. In 1937, Mercer began employment with the Warner Brothers studio, working with the veteran composer Richard Whiting (
Ain’t We Got Fun?), soon producing his “Porteresque” standard,
Too Marvelous for Words, followed by
Hooray for Hollywood. After Whiting’s sudden death from a heart attack, Mercer joined forces with
Harry Warren and created
Jeepers Creepers, which earned Mercer his first Oscar for Best Song. It was given a memorable recording by
Louis Armstrong. Another hit with Warren in 1938 was
You Must Have Been a Beautiful Baby. The pair also created
Hooray For Spinach, a comic song produced for the film
Naughty But Nice in 1939.
During a lull at Warners, Mercer revived his singing career. He joined Bing Crosby’s informal minstrel shows put on by the “Westwood Marching and Chowder Club”, which included many Hollywood luminaries and brought together Crosby and
Bob Hope. A duet
Mr. Crosby and Mr. Mercer was recorded and became a hit in 1938.
In 1939, Mercer wrote the lyrics to a melody by
Ziggy Elman a trumpet player with
Benny Goodman. The song was
And the Angels Sing and, although recorded by
Bing Crosby and
Count Basie, it was the Goodman version with vocal by
Martha Tilton and memorable trumpet solo by Elman that became the Number One hit. Years later, the title was inscribed on Mercer's tombstone. It was also featured in the movie
The Benny Goodman Story with
Steve Allen portraying Goodman.
Mercer was invited to the
Camel Caravan radio show in New York to sing his hits and create satirical songs with the
Benny Goodman orchestra, then becoming the emcee of the nationally broadcast show for several months. Two more hits followed shortly,
Day In—Day Out and
Fools Rush In, and Mercer in short order had five of the top ten songs on the popular radio show
Your Hit Parade. Mercer also started a short-lived publishing company during his stay in New York. On a lucky streak, Mercer undertook a musical with
Hoagy Carmichael, but
Walk With Music (originally called
Three After Three) was a bomb, with story quality not matching that of the score. Another disappointment for Mercer was the selection of
Johnny Burke as the long-term songwriter for the Hope-Crosby “Road” pictures. In 1940, the Mercers adopted a daughter, Amanda. Mercer was thirty and his life and career were riding high.
In 1941, shortly after the death of his father, Mercer began an intense affair with nineteen-year-old
Judy Garland while she was engaged to composer
David Rose. Garland married Rose to temporarily stop the affair, but the effect on Mercer lingered, adding to the emotional depth of his lyrics. Their affair revived again later. Mercer stated that his song
I Remember You was the most direct expression of his feelings for Garland.
Shortly thereafter, Mercer met an ideal musical collaborator in the form of
Harold Arlen whose
jazz and
blues-influenced compositions provided Mercer's sophisticated, idiomatic lyrics a perfect musical vehicle. Now Mercer's
lyrics began to display the combination of sophisticated wit and southern regional vernacular that characterize some of his best songs. Their first hit was
Blues in the Night (1941), which
Arthur Schwartz claimed was “probably the greatest blues song ever written”.
They went on to compose
One for My Baby (and One More for the Road) (1941),
That Old Black Magic (1942),
Ac-Cent-Tchu-Ate the Positive (1944), and
Come Rain Or Come Shine (1946) among others.
Frank Sinatra was particularly successful with the first two, and Bing Crosby with the third. “Come Rain” was Mercer’s only Broadway hit, composed for the show
St. Louis Woman with
Pearl Bailey.
On the Atchison, Topeka and the Santa Fe was a big smash for Judy Garland in the 1946 film
The Harvey Girls.
Mercer re-united with Hoagy Carmichael with
Skylark (1941),
How Little We Know (1944) and
In the Cool, Cool, Cool of the Evening (1951). With
Jerome Kern, Mercer created
You Were Never Lovelier for
Fred Astaire and
Rita Hayworth in the movie of the same name, as well as
I’m Old Fashioned. Mercer co-founded
Capitol Records (originally “Liberty Records”) in Hollywood in 1942, along with producer Buddy DeSylva and record store owner Glen Wallichs.
In
1969, Mercer helped publishers Abe Olman and Howie Richmond found the
National Academy of Popular Music's Songwriters Hall of Fame. In 1971, Mercer presented a retrospective of his career for the "Lyrics and Lyricists Series" in New York, including an omnibus of his "greatest hits" and a performance by
Margaret Whiting. It was recorded live as
An Evening with Johnny Mercer. In 1974, Mercer recorded two albums worth of his songs in London, with the Pete Moore Orchestra, and with the Harry Roche Constellation, later compiled into a single album and released as
"...My Huckleberry Friend: Johnny Mercer Sings the Songs of Johnny Mercer".
In 1975,
Paul McCartney approached Mercer for a collaboration but Mercer was ill, and an inoperable brain tumor was diagnosed. He died on
June 25,
1976 in
Bel Air,
California.
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 Mercer's Southern heritage that enabled him to be one of the few writers who skillfully produced lyrics compatible with 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 been accepted in the Tin Pan Alley years. is a block away from the Capitol Records building at 1750 Vine Street.
Johnny Mercer was given deserved tribute in
John Berendt's book
Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil. When the book was published, and then the movie of the same title by Clint Eastwood, it propelled Savannah and the Bonaventure Cemetery into the spotlight and made the city a major tourist destination.
Academy Awards
Mercer won four
Academy Awards for Best Song:
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 Malneck)
"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 A. 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)
"Wings Over the Navy" (1939) (music by Harry Warren)
"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)
"Tangerine" (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)
"Something's Gotta Give" (1954) (words and music by Johnny Mercer)
"Moon River" (1961) (music by Henry Mancini)
"Days of Wine and Roses" (1962) (music by Henry Mancini)
"Charade" (1963) (music by Henry Mancini)
"Lorna" (1964) {music by Mort Lindsey)
"Midnight Sun" (music by Lionel Hampton and Sonny Burke)
"Summer Wind" (1965) (music by Henry Mayer)
"Drinking Again" (with Doris Tauber)
"When October Goes" (music by Barry Manilow)Further Information
Get more info on 'Johnny Mercer'.
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