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Portrait of Johnny: The Life of John Herndon Mercer

Average customer rating:

great lyricist
Packed with reflections by those who knew him best
INCOMPLETE PORTRAIT
Five stars . . . IF you can answer the question
Lees' book better than Furia's?

Portrait of Johnny: The Life of John Herndon Mercer
Gene Lees
Manufacturer: Pantheon
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

General | Biographies & Memoirs | Subjects | Books

Memoirs | Biographies & Memoirs | Subjects | Books

General | Music | Entertainment | Subjects | Books
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ASIN: 0375420606
Release Date: 2004-10-26

Book Description

An intimate biography of the great songwriter, this is also a deeply affectionate memoir by one of Johnny Mercer’s best friends.

“Moon River,” “Laura,” “Skylark,” ”That Old Black Magic,” “One for My Baby,” “Accentuate the Positive,” “Satin Doll,” “Days of Wine and Roses,” “Something’s Gotta Give”—the honor roll of Mercer’s songs is endless. Both Oscar Hammerstein II and Alan Jay Lerner called him the greatest lyricist in the English language, and he was perhaps the best-loved and certainly the best-known songwriter of his generation. But Mercer was also a complicated and private man.

A scion of an important Savannah family that had lost its fortune, he became a successful Hollywood songwriter (his primary partners included Harold Arlen and Jerome Kern), a hit recording artist, and, as co-founder of Capitol Records, a successful businessman, but he remained forever nostalgic for his idealized childhood (with his “huckleberry friend”). A gentleman, a nasty drunk, funny, tender, melancholic, tormented—Mercer was a man immensely talented yet plagued by
self-doubt, much admired and loved but never really understood.

In music historian and songwriter Gene Lees, Mercer has his perfect biographer, who deals tactfully but directly with Mercer’s complicated relationships with his domineering mother; his tormenting wife, Ginger; and Judy Garland, who was the great love of his life. Lees’s highly personal examination of Mercer’s life is sensitive as only the work of a friend of many years could be to the conflicts in Mercer’s nature. And it is filled with insights into Mercer’s work that could come only from a fellow lyricist (whose own lyrics were much admired by Mercer).

A poignant, candid, revelatory portrait of Johnny.

Customer Reviews:

great lyricist.......2007-01-17

I've always been a fan of Johnny Mercer and this book let me know thhe man behind the songs that he wrote.
Excellent book

Packed with reflections by those who knew him best.......2006-05-23

PORTRAIT OF JOHNNY: THE LIFE OF JOHN HERNDON MERCER isn't just for already-dedicated fans of the musician, but for any interested in the lasting effects of his songs. Gene Lees is a music historian and songwriter who handles well the sensitive details of Mercer's life and times. From his complicated relationships with a domineering mother and tormenting wife and to his work on show songs which succeeded and some which failed, PORTRAIT OF JOHNNY is packed with reflections by those who knew him best.

Diane C. Donovan, Editor
California Bookwatch

INCOMPLETE PORTRAIT.......2006-01-06

Being an admirer of Mr. Mercer's work, I looked forward to reading this book. I found the bio's author, who was acquainted with the songwriter, to be way too intrusive, opinionated and judgmental. The author heaps abuse on Mercer's wife of many years mostly because of her life post-Johnny and, amazingly enough, because she apparently wasn't a good conversationalist ("I could never find anything to talk about with her" is the refrain that occurs way too often). The other reviews of this book posted here interested me because it hints at something that is completely glossed over in the book - Mercer's sexuality. The closest it gets to the issue is the statement that Judy Garland always got involved with homosexual men, followed a few sentences later with the beginning of Mercer's affair with her. Mercer is obviously tormented and unhappy about something throughout his life - Lees near the end of the book tries to pin it on Ginger, but given the apparent lack of passion in that relationship, that doesn't seem to hold up. If Lees is afraid to say Mercer was closeted, fine - but he shouldn't then blame everything wrong in his life on his wife. Mercer was an incredibly talented man - but I think being the wife of a sexually conflicted man is probably not the happiest position to be in either. There is a lot of good information about Mercer in this book, but the author puts himself in the middle of it much too much.

Five stars . . . IF you can answer the question.......2005-03-24

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.

----

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."

----

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."

Lees' book better than Furia's?.......2005-03-11

Neither of them do a great job showing what kind of woman Ginger really was, though Furia has some scenes showing Johnny treating her as though she were nothing but trailer trash. Let's face it, Ginger isn't going to be well thought of by any member of the reading public until she gets a full biography of her own. Why not? Ada had one--the wife of Vladimir Nabokov. And after the two biographies of Johnny, we certainly need a life of Ginger as a corrective. Lees hints that Johnny Mercer had a sexual identity problem. Even if he did it wasn't Ginger's fault. You know right away that as soon as some guy reveals that Judy Garland was the love of his life, well basically that is saying, well, he's gay.

That said, Lees is very good about exploring the general shape of Mercer's career. It was a skyrocket that looped and billowed all over the night sky, and he never wound up in the place you might have predicted for him. His writing was sometimes ornate and flowery, but just when you had him figured out as a Swinburne of popular song, he could surprise you with something austere and simple (like "I Thought About You" or "Autumn Leaves" or "The Sweetheart Tree"). His writing changed with the times, and yet it seems timeless, like the moods of "Moon River." Gene Lees responds more than Furia to the claims place made on Mercer, from Savannah to New York to the famous Capital Records building in LA which he helped to build. He remains an inspiration to songwriters everywhere; poets too.

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