JOHNNY MERCER "BOBBY DARIN & JOHNNY MERCER TWO OF A KIND ATCO" AUTOGRAPH ALBUM

Sold Date: September 16, 2022
Start Date: September 9, 2022
Final Price: $50.00 (USD)
Bid Count: 7
Seller Feedback: 2947
Buyer Feedback: 56



1961 ATCO Records vintage "Bobby Darin & Johnny Mercer Two of A Kind " autographed by Johnny Mercer.  He signed with black ball point pen. Mercer(d76)was an American lyricist, songwriter, and singer, as well as a record label executive who co-founded Capitol Records with music industry businessmen Buddy DeSylva and Glenn E. Wallichs.  He is best known as a Tin Pan Alley lyricist, but he also composed music, and was a popular singer who recorded his own songs as well as songs written by others from the mid-1930s through the mid-1950s. Mercer's songs were among the most successful hits of the time, including "Moon River", "Days of Wine and Roses", "Autumn Leaves", and "Hooray for Hollywood". He wrote the lyrics to more than 1,500 songs, including compositions for movies and Broadway shows. He received nineteen Oscar nominations, and won four Best Original Song Oscars. Mercer's first big Hollywood song, the satirical "I'm an Old Cowhand from the Rio Grande", was inspired by a road trip through Texas (he wrote both the music and the lyrics). It was performed by Crosby in the film Rhythm on the Range in 1936, and from then on the demand for Mercer as a lyricist took off. His second hit that year was "Goody Goody", music by Matty Malneck. In 1937, Mercer began working for Warner Bros., working with the composer Richard Whiting, soon producing his standard, "Too Marvelous for Words", followed by "Hooray for Hollywood", the opening number in the film Hollywood Hotel (1937). After Whiting's sudden death from a heart attack, Mercer collaborated with Harry Warren and wrote "Jeepers Creepers",  which earned Mercer his first Oscar nomination for Best Song (1938). 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 Crosby's informal minstrel shows put on by the "Westwood Marching and Chowder Club", which included many Hollywood luminaries.  Mercer worked on numerous duets for himself and Crosby to perform, several were recorded and two, "Mr. Gallagher and Mr. Shean" (1938) a reworking of an old vaudville song and "Mister Meadowlark" (1940) became hits.  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 Crosby and Count Basie, it was the Goodman version with vocal by Martha Tilton and klezmer style trumpet solo by Elman that became a major hit. Years later, the title was inscribed on Mercer's tombstone.  Mercer was invited to the Camel Caravan radio show in New York to sing his hits and create satirical songs, like "You Ought to be in Pittsburgh", a parody of "You Ought to be in Pictures", 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" (both with music by Rube Bloom), 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. Mercer undertook a musical, Walk with Music (originally called Three After Three), with Hoagy Carmichael, but it was critically panned and commercially unsuccessful.  Shortly thereafter, Mercer began working with Harold Arlen, who wrote jazz and blues-influenced compositions while Mercer wrote lyrics. Their first hit was "Blues in the Night" (1941), which Arthur Schwartz called "probably the greatest blues song ever written."  They went on to compose "One for My Baby (and One More for the Road)" (1941), "Ac-Cent-Tchu-Ate the Positive" (1944), "That Old Black Magic" (1942), and "Come Rain or Come Shine" (1946), among others.  "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" with music by Harry Warren, was a big smash for Judy Garland in the 1946 film The Harvey Girls, and earned Mercer the first of his four Academy Awards for Best Song, after eight unsuccessful nominations.Mercer re-united with Hoagy Carmichael with "Skylark" (1941),[35] and, ten years later, the Oscar-winning "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 founded Capitol Records in Hollywood in 1942, with the help of producer Buddy DeSylva and record store owner Glen Wallichs.   He also co-founded Cowboy Records. As the founder active in the management of Capitol during the 40s, he signed many of its important recording artists, including Nat "King" Cole. It also gave him an outlet for his own recordings. His hit "Strip Polka" was its third release. But Mercer recorded not only his own songs but ones by others as well. His four million-sellers were his own "Ac-Cent-Tchu-Ate the Positive" and "On the Atchison, Topeka, and the Santa Fe", and two by other composers, "Candy" and "Personality". One recording of a song that has lived on is his recording of "Zip-a-Dee-Doo-Dah", written by Allie Wrubel and Ray Gailbert for Disney's 1946 movie, Song of the South. Mercer's recording was a top hit for eight weeks in December 1947 and January 1948, reaching number 8. Today it continues to be the version most played on Sirius's 40s satellite channel.  Mercer by the mid-1940s enjoyed a reputation as one of the premier Hollywood lyricists. He was adaptable, listening carefully and absorbing a tune and then transforming it into his own style. Like Irving Berlin, he was a close follower of cultural fashion and changing language, which in part accounted for the long tenure of his success. He loved many words (Too Marvelous for Words), including puns (Strip Polka), and current terms ("G. I. Jive"). He employed sound effects, as well, such as the train whistle sounds in "Blues in the Night" and "On the Atchison, Topeka, and the Santa Fe."  Mercer preferred to have the music first, taking it home and working on it. He claimed composers had no problem with this method provided that he returned with the lyrics.  Mercer was often asked to write new lyrics to already popular songs. The lyrics to "Laura", "Midnight Sun", and "Satin Doll" were all written after the melodies had become hits. He was also asked to compose English lyrics to foreign songs, the most famous example being "Autumn Leaves", based on the French song "Les Feuilles Mortes".In the 1950s, the advent of rock and roll cut deeply into Mercer's natural audience, and dramatically reduced venues for his songs. Mercer wrote for several MGM films, including Seven Brides for Seven Brothers (1954) and Merry Andrew (1958). He collaborated on three Broadway musicals in the 1950s—Top Banana (1951), Li'l Abner (1956), and Saratoga (1959).  Mercer made occasional television appearances. In the 1953–1954 season, he guest starred as himself on ABC's Jukebox Jury, a musical/quiz program on which celebrities judge the latest releases from the recording companies.  In 1954, he appeared on NBC's The Donald O'Connor Show.  His more successful songs of the 1950s include "The Glow-Worm" (sung by the Mills Brothers) and "Something's Gotta Give". In 1961, he wrote the lyrics to "Moon River" for Audrey Hepburn in Breakfast at Tiffany's and for Days of Wine and Roses, both with music by Henry Mancini, and Mercer received his third and fourth Oscars for Best Song. The back-to-back Oscars were the first time a songwriting team had achieved that feat.   Mercer, also with Mancini, wrote "Charade" for the 1963 romantic thriller of the same name. The Tony Bennett classic "I Wanna Be Around" was written by Mercer in 1962, as was the Frank Sinatra hit "Summer Wind" in 1965.  An indication of the high esteem in which Mercer was held can be observed he was the only lyricist to have his work recorded as a volume of Ella Fitzgerald's series of Song book albums. Ella Fitzgerald Sings the Johnny Mercer Song Book was released by Verve Records in 1964.  Mercer was humble about his work, attributing much of his success to luck and timing. He was fond of telling the story of how he was offered the job of doing the lyrics for Johnny Mandel's music on The Sandpiper, only to have the producer turn his lyrics down. The producer offered the commission to Paul Francis Webster and the result was "The Shadow of Your Smile", which became a huge hit, winning the 1965 Oscar for Best Original Song. However, Mercer and Mandel did collaborate on the 1964 song "Emily" from the film The Americanization of Emily starring Julie Andrews.  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, he collaborated on the West End production The Good Companions. He also recorded two albums of his songs in London in 1974, 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.  Late in his life, Mercer became friends with pianist Emma Kelly. He gave her the nickname "The Lady of Six-Thousand Songs" after challenging her, over several years, to play numerous songs he named. He kept track of the requests, and estimated she knew 6,000 songs from memory.



Mercer won four Academy Awards on eighteen nominations for Best Original Song:   

    1946: "On the Atchison, Topeka and the Santa Fe" (music by Harry Warren) for The Harvey Girls

    1951: "In the Cool, Cool, Cool of the Evening" (music by Hoagy Carmichael) for Here Comes the Groom

    1961: "Moon River" (music by Henry Mancini) for Breakfast at Tiffany's

    1962: "Days of Wine and Roses" (music by Henry Mancini) for Days of Wine and Roses

Mercer was also nominated for Best Original Song Score for the 1970 Mancini collaboration Darling Lili.

Comes with money back guarantee if not satisfied. Low starting bid. Will ship international.