The
Complete Lyrics of Johnny Mercer
authors:
Robert Kimball , Barry Day , Miles Kreuger and Eric Davis
The seventh volume in Knopf’s critically acclaimed Complete Lyrics series, published in Johnny Mercer’s centennial year, contains the texts to more than 1,200 of his lyrics, several hundred of them published here for the first time. Johnny Mercer’s early songs became staples of the big band era and were regularly featured in the musicals of early Hollywood. With his collaborators, who included Richard A. Whiting, Harry Warren, Hoagy Carmichael, Jerome Kern, and Harold Arlen, he wrote the lyrics to some of the most famous standards, among them, “Too Marvelous for Words,” “Jeepers Creepers,” “Skylark,” “I’m Old-Fashioned,” and “That Old Black Magic.”During a career of more than four decades, Mercer was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Song an astonishing eighteen times, and won four: for his lyrics to “On the Atchison, Topeka, and the Santa Fe” (music by Warren), “In the Cool, Cool, Cool of the Evening” (music by Carmichael), and “Moon River” and “Days of Wine and Roses” (music for both by Henry Mancini).You’ve probably fallen in love with more than a few of Mercer’s songs–his words have never gone out of fashion–and with this superb collection, it’s easy to see that his lyrics elevated popular song into art
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· Format: Hardcover, 488 pages · On Sale: October 20, 2009 · ISBN: 978-0-307-26519-7
(0-307-26519-6) 
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Now
Poignant Photographic Biography of Johnny Mercer---Published Just in Time
to Celebrate the Anniversary of His 100th Birthday on November 18
The mere facts astonish.
Over 1,500 songs with more than 100 hits. Songs used in over 385 movies.
Thirteen top ten singles as a singer, four of them number one hits. Nineteen
Academy Award nominations. And all
because of the songs.. .Think "Summer Wind." "Moon River."
"Skylark." "One for My Baby." "Days of Wine and
Roses." "On the Atchison, Topeka and the Santa Fe."
The enormous catalogue of
hit songs written by Johnny Mercer made him the peer of such giants as Cole
Porter, Ira Gershwin, Irving Berlin, and Oscar Hammerstein II, and it is
fitting that Johnny Mercer: The Life, Times and Song Lyrics of Our Huckleberry
Friend, collected and edited by the now-deceased Bob Bach and Ginger Mercer, is
available just in time for what would have been Mercer's 100th birthday on
November 18. This newly re-published collection of pictures, lyrics, and
memorabilia covers Mercer's life from his Savannah childhood through his
Hollywood days and the remarkable period of the 1930s-50s when he was at his
most productive.
The book documents the birth
of the Capitol Records label and the Songwriters Hall of Fame, both of which
Mercer co-founded, as well as Mercer's association with Nat "King"
Cole, Peggy Lee, Betty Hutton, Fred Astaire, Louis Armstrong, Judy Garland, Jo
Stafford, Bing Crosby, Benny Goodman, and many others. It also takes stock of
Mercer's personal highs, such as winning four Academy Awards, and his equally
personal lows, including the shattering disappointment of several Broadway
shows that failed.
The book also includes newly
released photographs as well as stories written and illustrated by Mercer and
some of his childhood friends. In addition, the lists of Mercer's songs,
including songs he contributed to the movies, have been reviewed, updated, and
expanded. Other sections in the book list the songs Mercer wrote for theatrical
productions and the songs he wrote that are currently available on compact
discs.
Available at bookstores
everywhere or through the publisher, Cherokee Publishing, P.O. Box 1730,
Marietta, GA 30061-1730- @$25 plus
postage mailto:kwbcherokee@bellsouth.net
For more information, contact Publisher Kenneth Boyd at mailto:kwbcherokee@bellsouth.net
Portrait
of Johnny: The Life of John Herndon Mercer By Gene Lees
Now in paperback, a wonderful bio of America's great lyricist who wrote
"Moon River" and "Satin Doll" A poignant, candid portrait
of a great American lyricist of the 20th century, Portrait of Johnny - The Life
of John Herndon Mercer is also a deeply personal memoir by one of Johnny
Mercer's best friends. "Moon River," "Black Magic,"
"Laura," "Satin Doll" - the honor roll of Mercer's songs is
endless. Both Oscar Hammerstein II and Alan Jay Lerner called him the greatest
lyricist in the English language, and he was perhaps the best-loved and
certainly the best-known songwriter of his generation. In music historian and
songwriter Gene Lees, Mercer has his perfect biographer, who deals tactfully but
directly with his complicated relations with his domineering mother, his
tormenting wife, Ginger, and Judy Garland, the great love of his life.
Skylark is the story of the life and career of Johnny Mercer.
Raised in Savannah, Mercer brought a quintessentially southern style to both
his life in New York and to his lyrics, which often evoked the landscapes and
mood of his youth ("Moon River", "In the Cool, Cool, Cool of the
Evening"). Mercer also absorbed the music of southern blacks--the
lullabies his nurse sang to him as a baby and the spirituals that poured out of
Savannah's churches-and that cool smooth lyrical style informed some of his
greatest songs, such as "That Old Black Magic".
Based on scores of interviews with friends, family and colleagues, and drawing
extensively on Johnny Mercer's letters, papers and his unpublished
autobiography, Skylark is an important book about one of the great and
dramatic characters in 20th century popular music.
