November 18, 1909– Johnny Mercer was born in Savannah. He grew up to be one of the most influential & popular lyricists of The Great American Songbook, with a fabulous, celebrated career, prodigious output, particular Southern charm, & hip sophisticated songs that never grow old.
Mercer is one my favorite lyricists. He wrote witty, smart, insightful lyrics. Mercer wrote the words, & sometimes the music, for more than 1,500 songs, with more than 200 collaborators, among them, composers Duke Ellington, Harold Arlen, Jerome Kern & Henry Mancini.
Mercer was nominated for an astounding 18 Academy Awards & won 4.
As a teenager, Mercer moved to NYC with the intention of becoming an actor. He was cast in a few small roles, but his first break in show biz came when a song for which he had written the lyric was featured in the Broadway show The Garrick Gaieties Of 1930. He won a singing contest & landed a job as the boy singer with Paul Whiteman’s orchestra in 1932. Whiteman introduced him to Hoagy Carmichael, & together they had a hit with Lazybones (1933).
Mercer went to Hollywood to write songs for films. At the same time, his singing career took off. At the end of the 1930s, he was a vocalist with Benny Goodman’s band, & by the early 1940s he had his own radio show, Johnny Mercer’s Music Shop.
In 1942, along with fellow songwriter Buddy De Sylva he founded Capitol Records & served as the label’s president & main talent scout. He was responsible for signing Stan Kenton, Nat King Cole, Jo Stafford, & Margaret Whiting. In 1946, Capitol was responsible for one sixth of all records sold in the USA.
He teamed up with Harold Arlen to write the Broadway musical St. Louis Woman (1946). The show included the classic tunes as Any Place I Hang My Hat Is Home & Come Rain Or Come Shine.
That same year, he won the first of his Oscars for the lyrics On The Atchison, Topeka, & Santa Fe (music by Harry Warren), sung by Judy Garland in The Harvey Girls (1946).
He won the second Oscar for In The Cool, Cool, Cool Of The Evening (music by Carmichael), which Bing Crosby & Jane Wyman sang in Here Comes The Groom (1951) & at the time he wrote both lyrics & music for the hit Broadway musical Top Banana, which was not about my life in NYC in the 1970s
Mercer continued to move between movies & stage with the MGM film Seven Brides For Seven Brothers (1954) & the Broadway musical Li’l Abner (1956).
He wrote Moon River (music by Mancini) for the film Breakfast At Tiffany’s (1961) & won his third Oscar. The very next year, he became the first songwriter to win 4 Academy Awards, this one for Days Of Wine And Roses, again with Mancini.
Mercer wrote songs in 4 different decades, from the 1930s-1960s. Among the hundreds of hit songs he either wrote lyrics, music or both: P.S. I Love You (1934), Fools Rush In (1940), Blues In The Night (1941), Skylark (1941), That Old Black Magic (1942), Ac-Cent-Tchu-Ate The Positive (1944), Autumn Leaves (1950), Something’s Gotta Give (1955), Satin Doll (1957), Charade (1963), Summer Wind (1965). I bet one of your very most favorite songs has a terrific Mercer lyric.
Mercer’s lyrics combine a sly wit, a keen appreciation of American colloquialisms, & profoundly poetic sensibility. They have a richness & emotional complexity that make them sound sophisticated even today.
Mercer was a founder & the very first president of the Songwriters Hall Of Fame. He was a charming & talented man, with a terrific singing voice. Mercer was a favorite of the show biz community. He took his final bow in 1976, taken by cancer. I was working at ASCAP (American Society Of Composers, Authors & Publishers), across from Lincoln Center on the island of Manhattan, at the time & there was authentic grieving in the building that morning.
Check out his lyrics to the most perfect saloon song of all time, One For My Baby, introduced by Fred Astaire in The Sky’s The Limit (1943):
It’s quarter to three,
There’s no one in the place except you & me
So, set ’em up, Joe,
I got a little story you oughta know
We’re drinking, my friend,
To the end of a brief episode
Make it one for my baby
& one more for the road
I got the routine, so drop another nickel
In the music machine
I’m feelin’ so bad,
Wish you’d make
The music pretty & sad
Could tell you a lot,
But you’ve got to be true to your code
So, make it one for my baby
& one more for the road
You’d never know it but buddy,
I’m a kind of poet
& I got a lot of things to say
& when I’m gloomy, you simply gotta listen to me
Till it’s all talked away
Well that’s how it goes
& Joe…
I know your getting pretty anxious to close
So, thanks for the cheer,
I hope you didn’t mind my bending your ear
This torch that I found
Must be drowned,
Or it soon might explode
So, make it one for my baby
& one more for the road
That long, long road
With Harold Arlen’s music
1943
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