Portrait of Johnny: The Life of John Herndon Mercer Review

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(More customer reviews)Yesterday, I spoke with about a dozen of my co-workers -- most of them ten or even twenty years younger-- and asked each of them,"Who's Jerome Kern? -- does that name ring a bell with you?" None of my friends recognized the name of the `dean' of great American popular songwriters - the man whose melodies inspired ALL of the other great composers - especially, George Gershwin, Cole Porter and Richard Rodgers.

This sad reality confirmed a thought I had, the moment I picked up this book, and wondered, to myself, Is there really any market for a book about Johnny Mercer? --a songwriter who died almost 30 years ago?- How many people today would care to read a biography - however interesting (and this one is simply superb) - that concerns an old songwriter? --- even someone who was, according to his peers, the greatest lyricist of the English language?

Here's a simple test:If the following song titles mean something to you - then I can guarantee you will LOVE this book:"Skylark," "Autumn Leaves," "The Summer Wind," "One For My Baby," "Something's Gotta Give," "Laura," "I Remember You," "That Old Black Magic," "Dream (when you're feeling blue) --- all of them, and many others, written by the same man, and celebrated here in "The Life of John Herndon Mercer," written by an old friend and fellow lyricist, Gene Lees.

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Mercer's best writing was to the music of the greatest composers of popular song - beginning with Jerome Kern in the early 1930s, ("I'm Old Fashioned") and continuing for 30 years, until the early 60s,when Johnny wrote two, consecutive "Best Song" Oscar winners with Henry Mancini-- "Moon River" and "Days of Wine and Roses."

We're reminded with many a poignant anecdote, that a golden age of great song writing died, years before Johnny Mercer left us, on June 25, 1976 - after lingering in a semi-vegetative state for eight months, following brain cancer surgery.

His widow, Ginger, presented Gene Lees with the only copy of Johnny's unfinished memoir, in the hopes that the author could develop it, into a book.Lees uses portions of Johnny's insightful writings, interjecting trenchant observations of his own-- as if conversing with the spirit of his old friend. Interspersed are conversations Gene had with Johnny, such as one from the late 60s, concerning the quality of contemporary song lyrics.Said Mercer,

"A lot of people who can't write (songs) are trying to write . . . and it's based on (a combination of) Elizabethan structure and hill music . . . like Simon and Garfunkel and Jimmy Webb and Johnny Hartford, and the kids down in Nashville - they take the guitar and try to philosophize to a hillbilly tune with chords that come from 'way, 'way (long) ago . . . I think Webb is a superior writer, I didn't mean to classify him with the others, and Burt Bacharach is trying very hard to be different --- too hard (I'd say) but he is gifted."

Then, musing about the songs that were popular in America almost a century ago, Mercer (born in 1909) wrote, "I used to listen with awe and wonder to every kind of music I could get my hands on. Gypsy airs on the accordion or zither, harmonica blues, gems from Broadway, the yodels of Jimmy Rodgers, cowboy songs from the prairies, all reached my ears and touched my heart.

When I remember talking to the old timers as a child, I know that the well of our folk music goes deeper than I or even my grandfather knew. The traditional songs were brought over here in the holds of the immigrant boats and the slave traders, those that reached us via the islands, are only a drop in the bucket, so vast and deep is the reservoir that we have kept hidden in our heart.

After a man spent all day ploughing a field, or herding cattle, laboring on the docks or in the mills, poling the canals and picking cotton, he had no movies or phonograph to lighten his burden . . . but he had his family, his jug and his banjo or mouth organ or concertina, and he could sing the old songs to escape and remind himself of happier times and wonderful far-off places. . . These were times when Mama and Pa and Grandpa and Uncle Silas forgot their troubles, forgot to be stern, and were as human as the kids."

This is a passage, according to Lees, "that could never have been written by Cole Porter, Lorenz Hart, Dorothy Fields or . . . any of the other major lyricists Johnny respected. It reveals a deep identification with the American people, the so-called common folk. Of all the sophisticated, literate lyricists, only John Mercer had this quality.

On the very next page, Lees chides his old friend for expressing the hope, in his memoir, that it's never too late for there to be another generation of good, if not great, song writers.As if in conversation, Lees writes tellingly,

"Oh John, you've fallen into the trap of optimism.Since you died, popular music has only deteriorated further. In the age of Elvis popular music dispensed with interesting and beautiful harmony.In the age of rap, it dispensed even with melody, beautiful or otherwise . . . . and radio (which made the career of Johnny Mercer) evolved in such a way that it is impossible to find anything by Jerome Kern on the air, and jazz has disappeared from commercial radio broadcasting.In 2002, National Public Radio cancelled its jazz shows.John, you may not have liked "Hair" the musical, or the Beatles . . . but compared with what is going on now, the songs of both seem like towers of taste and intelligence.

"Occasionally Shirley Horn or Natalie Cole will have a successful album of the great standards, and Diana Krall became a star singing them.But there is NO circumstance to generate the creation of (great) new songs in your tradition."

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Near the end of this splendid biography, Lees quotes Mercer in a prophetic observation about his own legacy, in answer to a question posed by a BBC interviewer,

"I think some of my songs may be noticed, as individual pieces, but I think Gilbert (& Sullivan, and Lorenz) Hart, possibly (Ira) Gershwin - because of his brother, but mostly because of his wit, his sly sense of humor, and (Irving) Berlin and (Cole) Porter, going right on up into (Alan Jay) Lerner and (Frank) Loesser, will be studied . . . and collected . . . and forgotten."

After including the names of "a few more" Johnny forgot to mention - Dorothy Fields, Oscar Hammerstein and the Bergmans, Marilyn and Alan, among others, the author recapitulates that lyric writing, "at least when it is pursued to its highest level" is the most difficult literary form of all - matching perfect words to great melodies.

The author recalls a stranger asking him (Gene Lees): "Don't you think Johnny was MORE than a lyricist? - that he was a poet?" Lees replied, without hesitation, "No, he was more than a poet - he was a lyricist."

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