Son Of Savannah

Johnny Mercer was born a bit over a century ago today.  One of the top lyricists and (sometime) tunesmiths of the 20th century (and not a bad singer), he was a true maseter of Tin Pan Alley who did a lot of his best work for the silver screen, where he won the Best Original Song Oscar four times.

Hoagy Carmichael wrote the tune for "Skylark" and the story goes that Mercer spent a year working on the lyric before he got it right.



One of my favorite Mercer songs is "My Shining Hour," tune by Harold Arlen. Here's Fred Astaire singing a little-known chorus--in fact, I've never heard it anywhere except The Sky's The Limit, where the song debuted.



Mercer didn't write too many shows for Broadway, but had a nice hit with L'il Abner, music by Gene de Paul  I did it in high school and one number that always stopped the show (and had a planned encore) was "Jubilation T. Cornpone." The hard part was remembering all the verses in the right order. (This clip from the movie, with the original Marryin' Sam Stubby Kaye, cuts quite a bit.)