1 “ON MERCER” Rediscovering The Genius of the American Songwriter, Johnny Mercer, Giant Of The Great American Songbook: [Up Close, Moving and Personal] by Frank Gagliano
[email protected] ONE: MERCER RESTART My Johnny Mercer journey started — well, restarted — sometime in the 1990s, when I first read “Roses In The Morning,” browsing in a bookstore in Pittsburgh. This was the title of an essay in Gene Lees’s book, “Singers and The Song.” (Oxford Press, 1987). The title of the essay referred to songwriter Johnny Mercer’s ritual of sending a dozen roses in the morning to people Mercer had insulted the night before, when he was very drunk. What first attracted me to “Singers and The Song,” however, was the cover: The iconic Frank Driggs photo of a young, skinny Frank Sinatra, standing on a stage, in front of a 1940s vintage microphone, in the midst (probably) of singing one of his signature ballads, arms down and out from his sides, palms up, head tilted to his left shoulder, eyes shut tight, wearing a tailored double breasted grey pinstripe suit with floppy grey bow tie, in full spotlight, against a black background, with only a portion of the accompanying white piano catching part of Sinatra’s spotlight. Whatever that venue, one could almost hear the bobbysoxers in the audience, squealing and swooning. 2 In the bookstore, I thumbed through the Sinatra essay and saw, immediately, that the chapter dealt with the artistry of the singer, and how Sinatra had revived the public’s interest in America’s greatest popular songs, and how Sinatra had also revolutionized the art of singing those songs.