MOSTLY MERCER
Singer, Lyricist, Composer

Johnny Mercer wrote songs for 90 motion pictures, won four Academy Awards, wrote six Broadway musicals, was a top radio personality and recording artist, founded Capitol Records and created the Songwriters Hall of Fame. Finding success in every musical endeavor he entertained, he was a true Renaissance man of American music in the 20th Century.

Mercer set a standard for writing lyrics that was hard to equal. He was the one to rhyme palace, chalice, and aurora borealis. His output was enormous, spanning the early days of the Swing Era through the mid-sixties progressive rock era. For five decades he collaborated with America’s greatest composers, including Hoagy Carmichael, Harry Warren, Harold Arlen, Jerome Kern, Jimmy Van Heusen, Duke Ellington, Andre Previn, Henry Mancini and many others.

Nearly every important American popular singer, from Nat King Cole, Rosemary Clooney, and Frank Sinatra to the Beach Boys and Dr. John, has recorded Johnny Mercer songs – from the lighthearted “You Must Have Been a Beautiful Baby” and “Jeepers Creepers” to the romantic “Laura” and “I Remember You;” from the dramatic “Blues in the Night” and “Come Rain or Come Shine” to the sassy “Satin Doll;” from the cinematic “Hooray for Hollywood” and “On The Atchinson, Topeka and The Santa Fe,” to the timeless standards of “That Old Black Magic,” “Glow Worm,” “Days of Wine and Roses” and “Moon River.”

Using song and story, Bobbi Carrey explores Johnny Mercer’s extraordinary success as a singer, lyricist and composer.

Johnny Mercer is the greatest American lyricist alive. I could no more write a lyric like one of his than fly. Oscar Hammerstein

P.S. I LOVE YOU
Johnny Mercer & Gordon Jenkins, 1934
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SKYLARK
Johnny Mercer & Hoagy Carmichael, 1941
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ANYPLACE I HANG MY HAT IS HOME
Johnny Mercer & Harold Arlen, 1946
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