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Guest Feature
My Huckleberry Friend: The Lyrics of Johnny
Mercer
Editor's Note: With the buzz building for the Johnny Mercer musical,
Dream, shepherded to Broadway by the
Mercer friend, disciple and star of the revue, Margaret Whiting, we are delighted to welcome
Richard N. Hughes as a contributor. We hope you'll enjoy his very personal retrospective as
much as we did and look forward to bringing you more of his composer and lyricist pieces.
The age-old question about popular songs has to do with which is more important, words or
music? My observation is that more people cite music than words as the dominant feature. When
the issue is raised, supporters of that view mention the intricate melodies of George Gershwin or
Jerome Kern and toss off one-liners like, "No one ever whistled a lyric..." But, in point of fact,
the evidence is all on the other side.
"Lazy Bones," Hoagy Carmichael's second greatest hit, gathered dust in his music chest until
the lyric was added. Ziggy Elman, the trumpeter for Benny Goodman's Band in the 1930s,
wrote a song which showcased his brilliant technique, and no one paid any attention to it until a
lyric titled "And The Angels Sing..." was added. Dizzy Gillespie wrote a number to
demonstrate the new musical form that he and Charlie Parker developed called "Be-bop," which
was all but unnoticed until a stunning lyric, "Midnight Sun," was added. In all three of those
cases, the lyrics that made the difference came from Johnny Mercer.
Johnny Mercer is, without question, one of the three or four premier lyricists of American
popular music, a field which is peopled with astonishing talent. From 1930 until his death from a
brain tumor in 1976, he turned out a succession of popular songs of unusual quality; songs with
deft lyrics, imagery worthy of a major poet and the part that touches most deeply, a haunting
vision of the past and the future and their effect upon the present which is otherwise unknown in
popular music. His collaborators included all of the best-known composers of the period; men
like Harold Arlen, Hoagy Carmichael, Jerome Kern, Henry Mancini, Arthur Schwartz, Jimmy Van
Husen, Harry Warren, and Richard Whiting, as well as a number of less well known musicians,
such as Joseph Kozma, Victor Schertzinger, and Matty Malneck. In his last years, he wrote a
number of songs with Blossom Dearie, including what may be the best "list" song of all time, "My
New Celebrity is You." Beyond that, although he had little or no musical training, he composed
the music of many of his greatest hits, songs like "Strip Polka," "The GI Jive," and "Dream."
Beyond that, he was the best performer of much of his music, singing in a swinging, jazzy
style that could not be mistaken. His first intention was to be an actor, and he turned to song
writing only when a casting director for a Broadway review turned him away with the words,
"We're only interested in girls and songs." He didn't get a part, but his first published song , "Out
of Breath and Scared to Death," appeared in the Garrick Gaieties in 1930. That
is something like
hitting a home run in your first time at bat in the major leagues. He later sang with the Paul
Whiteman Orchestra, The Benny Goodman Orchestra and then moved to Hollywood where he
began to write for the movies, and appeared regularly for a couple of years on the Bing Crosby
radio program. They were famous in that time for their duets on "Small Fry," "Mr. Meadowlark,"
and "Bob White," all of which were written by Mercer.
His first great exposure as a song writer came in 1936, when he did the lyrics for
Rhythm on
the Range, a movie which starred Bing Crosby and Frances Farmer, and introduced a
young
comic singer, Martha Raye, to movie audiences. Bob Burns, a deep south comic, also made his
debut in that film playing his "Bazooka," a home-made musical instrument which was the to give a
name to the anti-tank weapons which were first used in World War II. The big hit - the one that
pushed Mercer into the forefront of American popular music, was a nonsense song called "I'm An
Old Cow Hand," with lyrics unforgettable to this day.
John Herndon Mercer was born on November 18, 1909, in Savannah, Georgia, the son of a
prominent attorney and real estate speculator. The Mercers were of solid southern stock and
could trace their ancestry back to before the Revolutionary War, in which a Mercer served as a
brigadier-general under George Washington. He had an early interest in music, was given piano
lessons for a time but gave them up, and then switched to trumpet, but lost interest in that, too.
He attended Woodbury Forrest School in Virginia and sang in the chapel choir and developed an
interest in drama. As a youngster, his only work experience was helping out in his father's office
during summer vacations.
In his seventeenth year, his father's real estate business failed and pushed the family out of its
comfortable situation. Rather than declaring bankruptcy, George Mercer gave up his personal
holdings and all his real estate except the family home, started another business and vowed to pay
off the more than one million dollars in debts that he owed. When he died in 1940, he had paid
some $700,000 of that debt. In 1955, the banker who was handling the Mercer affairs received a
check for the remaining $300,000 along with a note from Johnny saying that he was glad to be
able to clear his father's debt, but the check was unsigned. Legend has it that a few days later,
another check arrived, signed, with a note that explained that he had carried the first check around
for several days, and thought he might have forgotten to sign it when he mailed it. "But," he
added, "If I did sign the first one, just tear one of them up..."
I first became aware of Johnny Mercer in 1936, when I was nine. I loved the movie
Rhythm
on The Range, and the song, "I'm An Old Cow Hand." I saw a picture of him in one of
my
sister's movie magazines and I liked his looks. He wasn't bad looking, he just wasn't handsome,
and that was a fair description of me. Beyond that, I loved music - wanted to be a popular singer
when I grew up - and so did he, so we had another connection. Without even realizing it, I
became a Fan - note the capital "F"- and I began to follow his career. In 1937, when he wrote the
music for Hollywood Hotel, and especially the song, "Hooray for Hollywood,"
which was sung
by Johnny "Scat" Davis, another not-handsome-but-okay-looking-guy that years later I worked
with on a television series, my identification was complete. I always identified with the guys
who didn't get the girl because they were ordinary-looking, and perhaps a little shy, in contrast to
the leading men. They were always more interesting than the leading men, and the girls would
always have been happier with them than with the Adonis characters, but the girls didn't know
that because they (we) couldn't tell them. Probably the best way to describe it is to say that they
(we) were always outsiders. Always standing to one side and watching - and thinking. So, like
Johnny Mercer in the few films he made, and like "Scat" Davis in the even fewer films he made,
we never got the girl and were relegated to the role of the "Silent Love," which was so well
captured in a popular song of that time and title. It would be nice if Johnny Mercer had written it,
but he didn't, even though the words captured exactly the "little-boy-lost" feeling all of us
ordinary, shy guys shared.
"I reach for you as I'd reach for a star,
worshiping you from afar, leaving me My Silent
Love..."
As I grew older and got over that shyness of youth - thank the Lord - even began to get the
girl occasionally, I began to see other things in Mercer's lyrics which absolutely devastated me. He
could blend the essence of a lost past and a longed-for future into a popular lyric, and combine
them with real down-to-earth situations in a way that I never heard before, and have rarely heard
since. To my taste, only Stephen Sondheim comes close among contemporary composers.
Mercer's songs are the lyric equivalents of the paintings of Edward Hopper - familiar scenes,
etched with crystal clarity, and covered over with an aching loneliness and longing for what might
have been, as in his opening lyrics for the title song of the movie Laura-- ( ". .
.the face in the misty light"). The song's
images speak to the ideal one, the Goddess, who is just out of reach. It is l ittle-boy-lost
searching, always searching.
Mercer writes with a vision of perfection, unsullied by the world. Consider the bridge for
"And The Angels Sing," a lyric he is said to have written in thirty minutes to fit a trumpet solo
written by Ziggy Elman when they both were with Benny Goodman's Band. The line, "Silver
waves that break on some undiscovered shore," is as perfect and as evocative as anything
ever written. Shakespeare would have been proud to have produced it.
That perfect dream world which we all seek was Mercer's metier. Consider "Skylark," from
1939 and the images he uses: "A meadow in the
mist..." "A valley green with Spring.." "The shadows and the rain..." "A blossom covered lane."
"Lonely flight..." "The music of the night..." "Strange as a will-o-the wisp," "Crazy as a loon"
"Sad as a Gypsy" Add to that the other images from other songs, "That Old Black Magic..." "A
leaf that's caught in the tide..." "Blues in the Night..." "That lonesome whistle, blowing cross the
trestle..." "A worrisome thing..."
"The moon will hide his light..." Always reaching for the unreachable. The Don Quixote of
American popular music.
Even as a performer, Mercer could not resist the little-boy lost lyric, even though that little
boy is now full grown. Consider "The Salt Lake City Blues," written by Leon Rene and Johnny
Lange. It was one of Mercer's most successful recordings, and it successfuly carries the little-boy
theme into manhood. Mercer didn't write it, but he could have, except that the love of his life was
with him nearly fifty years.
He was married to his wife Ginny, a dancer he met in New York in the late 1920s and they
had a daughter, Amanda, who was immortalized in the song, "Mandy is Two." While I didn't
know it at the time, it undoubtedly is the reason why one of my daughters is named Amanda. As
far as anyone knows, he had a happy life. Outwardly, he laughed and smiled all the time, but there
was one discordant note. In the mid 1940s, he was said to be seeing a psychiatrist several times a
week. That does not surprise me, given the imagery and mood of so many of his lyrics, but even
that was grist for his mill. The legend is that he wrote "Accentuate the Positive" while driving
home from a sessions with his analyst. He took the doctor's advice and turned it into a song:
The music business changed in the last few years of his life and he, like so many other gifted
lyricists, couldn't, as they say in show business, get arrested. (That is a play on the fact that when
you are arrested, you are booked, just as you are booked for a performance.) He wrote a few
songs by himself, words and music, which have all of that melancholy feeling of the songs of his
youth, but with a slightly different emphasis.
What I believe to be his last song was written in 1975, and is called "You Go Your Way." It
is a very touching lyric, made all the more so by the fact that his life would end in a few months.
But what a way to leave:
So you sing your song, I'll sing my song,
We may even share a touch of Auld Lang Synge,
Then you go your way, through your golden doorway,
And wish me luck as I go mine.
A sweet, sweet man.
In the spring of 1976, I heard Bobby Troup, a singer I like very much, perform one of my
favorite Mercer songs, "Jamboree Jones," which tells the story of an outsider - a little boy lost,
who is shunned by his college mates because he is more interested in playing the clarinet than in
football, but who, at precisely the right moment, when the team was behind 17 points in the Rose
Bowl and "only had about a minute to play," rose in the stands and played his clarinet - which
inspired the team and they snatched victory from the jaws of defeat.
I never read those words, or hear them sung, without getting a huge lump in my throat.
So I wrote to Johnny Mercer and told him how much the song meant to me, and how much he
and his music meant to me, and that no one else could even come close to singing it as well as he
did. I didn't know that he will ill, and I didn't expect a reply, but I got one from his attorney, who
told me about the brain tumor and said that Ginny Mercer had read the letter to Johnny, and he
had asked that a copy of his recording of the song be sent to me. I cherish it. He was dead ten
days later.
My Huckleberry friend.
If you love Johnny Mercer, there is one album you simply must get. It is a Book of the
Month Club Record, number 70-5240, and it is entitled "An Evening with Johnny Mercer, Alan
Jay Lerner and Sammy Cahn, a three record set, recorded as a part of the 92nd Street YMCA
Lyrics and Lyricists concerts in 1971. Each composer has two sides. Mercer talks about his early
life and sings some of his early songs, as well as a sampling of his best known works. It is one of
the most charming recordings you will ever hear. You might try the Book of the Month Club,
and if that doesn't work, start scouring the used record market. If it is out of print it may be
expensive - but it is worth some economizing in other parts of your life.
For everything you could possibly want to know about Mercer, check out Steve Taksler's Johnny Mercer Web Site, a labor of
love to educate others on the works of Mercer.
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