76 Facts About Johnny Mercer

John Herndon Mercer was an American lyricist, songwriter, and singer, as well as a record label executive who co-founded Capitol Records with music industry businessmen Buddy DeSylva and Glenn E Wallichs.

Johnny Mercer is best known as a Tin Pan Alley lyricist, but he composed music and was a popular singer who recorded his own as well as others' songs from the mid-1930s through the mid-1950s.

Johnny Mercer wrote the lyrics to more than 1,500 songs, including compositions for movies and Broadway shows.

Johnny Mercer received nineteen Oscar nominations, and won four Best Original Song Oscars.

Johnny Mercer was born in 1909, in Savannah, Georgia, where one of his first jobs, aged 10, was sweeping floors at the original 1919 location of Leopold's Ice Cream.

Johnny Mercer lived on Lincoln Street, a block away from the store's East Gwinnett and Habersham location.

Johnny Mercer's father, George Anderson Johnny Mercer, was a prominent attorney and real-estate developer.

Johnny Mercer was George's fourth son, and his first son by Lillian.

Johnny Mercer's great-grandfather was Confederate General Hugh Weedon Mercer and he was a direct descendant of American Revolutionary War General Hugh Mercer, a Scottish soldier-physician who died at the Battle of Princeton.

Johnny Mercer liked music as a small child and attributed his musical talent to his mother, who would sing sentimental ballads.

Johnny Mercer's aunt told him he was humming music when he was six months old and later she took him to see minstrel and vaudeville shows where he heard "coon songs" and ragtime.

Johnny Mercer once asked his brother who the best Tin Pan Alley songwriter was, and his brother said Irving Berlin.

Johnny Mercer's father owned the first car in town, and Mercer's teenage social life was enhanced by his driving privilege, which sometimes verged on recklessness.

The family would motor to the mountains near Asheville, North Carolina, to escape the Savannah heat and there Johnny Mercer learned to dance and to flirt with Southern belles, his natural sense of rhythm helping him on both accounts.

Johnny Mercer attended the exclusive Woodberry Forest School in Virginia until 1927.

Johnny Mercer began to scribble ingenious, sometimes strained, rhymed phrases for later use.

Johnny Mercer was the class clown and a prankster, and member of the "hop" committee that booked musical entertainment on campus.

Johnny Mercer was already somewhat of an authority on jazz at an early age.

Johnny Mercer went to work in his father's recovering business, collecting rent and running errands, but soon grew bored with the routine and with Savannah.

Johnny Mercer secured a day job at a brokerage house and sang at night.

Johnny Mercer met his future wife at the show, chorus girl Ginger Meehan.

Johnny Mercer had earlier been one of the many chorus girls pursued by the young crooner Bing Crosby.

The 20-year-old Johnny Mercer began to frequent the company of other songwriters and to learn the trade.

Johnny Mercer traveled to California to undertake a lyric writing assignment for the musical Paris in the Spring and met his idols Bing Crosby and Louis Armstrong.

Johnny Mercer found the experience sobering and realized that he much preferred free-standing lyric writing to writing on demand for musicals.

The new Mrs Johnny Mercer quit the chorus line and became a seamstress, and to save money the newlyweds moved in with Ginger's mother in Brooklyn.

Johnny Mercer did not inform his own parents of his marriage until after the fact, perhaps in part because he knew that Ginger being Jewish would not sit comfortably with some members of his family, and he worried they would try to talk him out of marrying her.

In 1932, Johnny Mercer won a contest to sing with the Paul Whiteman orchestra, but singing with the band did not help his situation significantly.

Johnny Mercer became a member of ASCAP and a recognized "brother" in the Tin Pan Alley fraternity, receiving congratulations from Irving Berlin, George Gershwin, and Cole Porter among others.

Johnny Mercer moved to Hollywood in 1935, and began writing music for films.

Johnny Mercer's first Hollywood assignment was a B-movie college musical, Old Man Rhythm, to which he contributed two songs and appeared in a small role.

Johnny Mercer's next project, To Beat the Band, was a commercial flop, but it led to a meeting and a collaboration with Fred Astaire on the moderately successful song "I'm Building Up to an Awful Let-Down".

Johnny Mercer landed into a hard-drinking circle, and began to drink more at parties and was prone to vicious outbursts when under the influence of alcohol, contrasting sharply with his ordinarily genial and gentlemanly behavior.

Johnny Mercer's second hit that year was "Goody Goody", music by Matty Malneck.

Johnny Mercer worked on numerous duets for himself and Crosby to perform: several were recorded, and two, "Mr Gallagher and Mr Shean" a reworking of an old vaudville song, and "Mister Meadowlark", became hits.

In 1939, Johnny Mercer wrote the lyrics to a melody by Ziggy Elman, a trumpet player with Benny Goodman.

Johnny Mercer was invited to the Camel Caravan radio show in New York to sing his hits and create satirical songs, like "You Ought to be in Pittsburgh", a parody of "You Ought to be in Pictures", with the Benny Goodman orchestra, then becoming the emcee of the nationally broadcast show for several months.

Johnny Mercer started a short-lived publishing company during his stay in New York.

Johnny Mercer undertook a musical, Walk with Music, with Hoagy Carmichael, but it was critically panned and commercially unsuccessful.

Shortly thereafter, Johnny Mercer began working with Harold Arlen, who wrote jazz and blues-influenced compositions while Johnny Mercer wrote lyrics.

Johnny Mercer re-united with Hoagy Carmichael with "Skylark", and, ten years later, the Oscar-winning "In the Cool, Cool, Cool of the Evening".

Johnny Mercer founded Capitol Records in Hollywood in 1942, with the help of producer Buddy DeSylva and record store owner Glen Wallichs.

Johnny Mercer's recording was a top hit for eight weeks in December 1947 and January 1948, reaching number 8.

Johnny Mercer was adaptable, listening carefully and absorbing a tune and then transforming it into his own style.

Johnny Mercer employed sound effects, as well, such as the train whistle sounds in "Blues in the Night" and "On the Atchison, Topeka, and the Santa Fe".

Johnny Mercer preferred to have the music first, taking it home and working on it.

Johnny Mercer claimed composers had no problem with this method provided that he returned with the lyrics.

Johnny Mercer was often asked to write new lyrics to already popular songs.

Johnny Mercer was asked to compose English lyrics to foreign songs, the most famous example being "Autumn Leaves", based on the French song "Les Feuilles Mortes".

In 1943, Johnny Mercer's Music Shop was a summer replacement for The Pepsodent Show on NBC.

Johnny Mercer was the star, and singers Ella Mae Morse and Jo Stafford were regulars on the program, with musical support from The Pied Pipers and Paul Weston and his orchestra.

Johnny Mercer wrote for several MGM films, including Seven Brides for Seven Brothers and Merry Andrew.

In 1961, he wrote the lyrics to "Moon River" for Audrey Hepburn in Breakfast at Tiffany's and for Days of Wine and Roses, both with music by Henry Mancini, and Johnny Mercer received his third and fourth Oscars for Best Song.

An indication of the high esteem in which Johnny Mercer was held can be observed in that he was the only lyricist to have his work recorded as a volume of Ella Fitzgerald's series of Song book albums.

Johnny Mercer was humble about his work, attributing much of his success to luck and timing.

Johnny Mercer was fond of telling the story of how he was offered the job of doing the lyrics for Johnny Mandel's music on The Sandpiper, only to have the producer turn his lyrics down.

In 1969, Johnny Mercer helped publishers Abe Olman and Howie Richmond found the National Academy of Popular Music's Songwriters Hall of Fame.

In 1971, Johnny Mercer presented a retrospective of his career for the "Lyrics and Lyricists Series" in New York, including an omnibus of his "greatest hits" and a performance by Margaret Whiting.

Johnny Mercer recorded two albums of his songs in London in 1974, with the Pete Moore Orchestra and with the Harry Roche Constellation, later compiled into a single album and released as.

Late in his life, Johnny Mercer became friends with pianist Emma Kelly.

Johnny Mercer gave her the nickname "The Lady of Six-Thousand Songs" after challenging her, over several years, to play numerous songs he named.

Johnny Mercer kept track of the requests, and estimated she knew 6,000 songs from memory.

Johnny Mercer was considered a first-rate performer of his own work.

In 1941, Johnny Mercer began an affair with 19-year-old Judy Garland, while she was engaged to composer David Rose.

Johnny Mercer stated that his song "I Remember You" was the most direct expression of his feelings for Garland.

Johnny Mercer died in 1976, aged 66, from an inoperable brain tumor, in the Bel Air neighborhood of Los Angeles, California.

Johnny Mercer won four Academy Awards on eighteen nominations for Best Original Song:.

Johnny Mercer was nominated for Best Original Song Score for the 1970 Mancini collaboration Darling Lili.

Johnny Mercer was honored by the United States Postal Service with his portrait placed on a stamp in 1996.

Johnny Mercer's star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame at 1628 Vine Street is a block away from the Capitol Records building at 1750 Vine Street.

In 1983, Mercer earned a posthumous nomination for a Tony Award for Best Original Score for his original lyrics and for Gene de Paul's original music and score with new songs by Al Kasha and Joel Hirschhorn for the stage musical Seven Brides for Seven Brothers at the 37th Tony Awards, but lost to Andrew Lloyd Webber and T S Eliot for Cats.

Johnny Mercer was given tribute in John Berendt's 1994 novel Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil.

The movie soundtrack contains 14 Johnny Mercer songs performed by artists such as Alison Krauss, Paula Cole, and Cassandra Wilson; the film's star, Kevin Spacey, sang Johnny Mercer's 1942 hit "That Old Black Magic".

The Complete Lyrics of Johnny Mercer was published by Knopf in October 2009.

In November 2009, a bronze statue of Johnny Mercer was unveiled in Ellis Square in Savannah, Georgia, his hometown and birthplace.

The Johnny Mercer Collections, including his papers and memorabilia, are preserved in the library of Georgia State University in Atlanta.