Johnny Mercer,Johnny Mercer Songs
November 5, 2009
Johnny Mercer,Johnny Mercer Songs:TCM accentuates the positive in this new salute to the great songwriter Johnny Mercer, and while Mercer’s life had a dark side, the result tonight on screen is a lavish musical feast worth savoring several times over.
“The Dream’s On Me” shows why Mercer belongs in the same sentence with America’s greatest golden-age popular songwriters, the likes of Irving Berlin, Cole Porter, the Gershwins and Rodgers and Hammerstein.
His songs include “Skylark,” “That Old Black Magic,” “Blues in the Night” and hundreds more. He collaborated with writers from Hoagy Carmichael to Henry Mancini, for whom he wrote the lyrics to “Moon River.”
Mercer was a son of the South, a proud Georgian whose family came from major money and lost it on the eve of the Depression.
He still followed his muse, the one that fascinated him with a wide range of jazz, pop, blues, folk, classical and gospel music.
Many of his lyrics had an easy, droll humor, like “Baby It’s Cold Outside.” Some were love songs. Others suggested deep pain and longing, like “One for My Baby.”
Rightly described in this special as the ultimate alcoholic torch song, “One for My Baby” wasn’t completely abstract for Mercer. He had a drinking problem, mentioned though not belabored here, and he carried a lifelong torch for a woman he could never have.
That woman was Judy Garland, and “Dream” suggests their doomed love inspired songs like “Come Rain or Come Shine.more details
