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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.
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