Legendary songwriter Johnny Mercer once told fellow lyricist Gene Lees: “It takes more talent to write music, but it takes more courage to write lyrics.” In a prolific five-decade career, starting in 1930, the country boy from Georgia wrote words (and occasionally the music) for more than 1,500 songs; among them are some of pop music’s bestcrafted and best-loved—”Blues in the Night,” “Laura,” and “Fools Rush In.”
John Herndon Mercer was born on November 18, 1909, the son of a prominent Savannah attorney and real estate speculator. He wrote his first song (”When Sister Susie Struts Her Stuff”) at age 15, and after graduating from high school, stowed away on a boat and went north to New York to become an actor. When a casting director told him, “We only need girls and songs,” Johnny turned his talents to music. After a stint as a singer-songwriter in Paul WHITEMAN’S orchestra, he teamed up with composer Hoagy CARMICHAEL and wrote his first hit, “Lazybones” (1933).
Mercer moved to California in 1935 and penned some of the greatest songs of the movie musicals’ golden age, including “Jeepers Creepers,” “I’m an Old Cowhand,” and “Something’s Gotta Give.” In Hollywood, he collaborated with a Who’s Who of popular music composers, including Jerome KERN (”I’m Old-Fashioned”), Richard Whiting (”Too Marvelous for Words”), Rube Bloom (”Fools Rush In”), and Harry Warren (”You Must Have Been a Beautiful Baby”). Johnny also crafted lyrics for jazz instrumental by Benny GOODMAN, Woody Herman, and Duke ELLINGTON, and his translations of French songs, such as “When the World Was Young” and “Autumn Leaves,” turned them into international hits.
However, Harold ARLEN was the composer who most perfectly matched Mercer’s wry, worldly-wise style, and their partnership yielded standards such as “Blues in the Night,” “That Old Black Magic,” and “One for My Baby (and One More for the Road).” In 1946, Mercer and Arlen wrote the “black folk drama,” St. Louis Woman, featuring the classic songs “Come Rain or Come Shine” and “Any Place I Hang My Hat Is Home.” Nicknamed “The Huckleberry Poet” (from his famous line “my huckleberry friend” in “Moon River”), Mercer followed no formal songwriting routine. The haunting lyrics to “Days of Wine and Roses” were scribbled down in a mere five minutes. Legend has it that he wrote “Ac-cent-tchu-ate the Positive,” the famed duet he performed with Bing CROSBY, while driving home from his analyst. Other tunes took him as long as a year to compose. “Sometimes you get lucky,” he said with typical modesty, “but not often.”
Mercer was a highly prolific songwriter, but he still found time to pursue other careers. In the late 1930s he began to appear regularly on radio, and his genial personality proved so suited to the medium that he was rewarded with his own show, Johnny Mercer’s Music Shop. In 1942, Mercer teamed up with Glen Wallich and film producer Buddy DeSylva to found Capitol Records, the label that was soon to become home to Nat King COLE. Mercer himself recorded several easy-going, jazzy hits for the label, including “Candy” and “Glow Worm.” He won four Academy Awards—one of which was for “Moon River,” from the soundtrack to Breakfast at Tiffany’s (1961). In 1974, he wrote the soundtrack with André PREVIN for the London West End musical The Good Companions.
Johnny Mercer died on June 25, 1976, at the age of 66, in Los Angeles, California. Dream, a theatrical celebration of his songs, opened on Broadway in 1997.
Michael R. Ross
SEE ALSO:
FILM MUSICALS; RECORD COMPANIES; TIN PAN ALLEY.
Bach, Bob, and Ginger Mercer. Our Huckleberry Friend: The Life, Times and Lyrics of Johnny Mercer (Seacaucus, NJ: Lyle Stuart, 1982)..
Furia, Philip. Poets of Tin Pan Alley (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1990)..
Lees, Gene. The Singers and the Song (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1987).
Darling Lilt; Hits of the Forties; Johnny Mercer.