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Johnny Mercer: The Poet of Savannah · Timeless Songs with Eileen Ponich

• 0:02
  SPEAKER_00: What do Moon River, Skylark, and Accentuate the Positive have in common?
• 0:09
  SPEAKER_00: One carries us toward a dream.
• 0:11
  SPEAKER_00: One aches with longing.
• 0:13
  SPEAKER_00: One tells us to keep our chin up.
• 0:16
  SPEAKER_00: Different moods, different melodies, but the words came from the same man.
• 0:23
  SPEAKER_00: How did a boy from Savannah learn to say so much about what we feel?
• 0:27
  [music]
• 0:36
  SPEAKER_00: Welcome to Timeless Songs, where great songs live on.
• 0:41
  SPEAKER_00: I'm Eileen Ponich.
• 0:43
  SPEAKER_00: Today, we're spending time with Johnny Mercer and discovering how
• 0:48
  SPEAKER_00: the world he heard growing up became songs we still carry in our hearts today.
• 0:56
  SPEAKER_00: Johnny Mercer was born in 1909 into a family with deep ties to Savannah.
• 1:02
  SPEAKER_00: His father, George, was an attorney and real estate businessman.
• 1:07
  SPEAKER_00: His mother, Lillian, had Croatian family roots.
• 1:12
  SPEAKER_00: Music was part of his childhood.
• 1:15
  SPEAKER_00: So were the theater, popular entertainment, and the pleasures of singing with friends.
• 1:22
  SPEAKER_00: He loved the world of performance, and as a young man, he imagined a future on the stage.
• 1:28
  SPEAKER_00: But there was another path laid out for him.
• 1:33
  SPEAKER_00: And the kind of career expected of a young man from a prominent family.
• 1:38
  SPEAKER_00: Princeton was the plan.
• 1:41
  SPEAKER_00: Then his father's financial troubles changed everything.
• 1:44
  SPEAKER_00: College was no longer possible.
• 1:47
  SPEAKER_00: I imagine that must have been a difficult disappointment.
• 1:52
  SPEAKER_00: And I find myself wondering what his life might have looked like if things had gone as expected.
• 2:00
  SPEAKER_00: Would he have entered the law, gone into business?
• 2:04
  SPEAKER_00: Would the songs we love ever have been written?
• 2:07
  SPEAKER_00: We can't know, of course, but we do know that his life took another direction.
• 2:14
  SPEAKER_00: In the late 1920s, Mercer went to New York to pursue show business.
• 2:20
  SPEAKER_00: He hoped to become an actor and a singer.
• 2:23
  SPEAKER_00: There were small roles, uncertain prospects, and the work of finding his place.
• 2:30
  SPEAKER_00: Along the way, his talent for writing lyrics began opening doors.
• 2:37
  SPEAKER_00: In 1932, he won a singing contest and landed a spot with Paul Whiteman's band.
• 2:44
  SPEAKER_00: Whiteman introduced him to Hoagy Carmichael,
• 2:48
  SPEAKER_00: and in 1933, the two of them had their first big hit, a song called Lazy Bones.
• 2:57
  SPEAKER_00: The young man who wanted to sing songs was discovering what a gift he had for writing them.
• 3:04
  SPEAKER_00: And he kept singing, too.
• 3:06
  SPEAKER_00: Mercer would become a successful recording artist and radio performer as well as a songwriter.
• 3:13
  SPEAKER_00: That matters, I think.
• 3:16
  SPEAKER_00: He understood words from both sides, from the writer's desk and from the microphone.
• 3:23
  SPEAKER_00: Mercer sometimes wrote music himself.
• 3:27
  SPEAKER_00: But his greatest gift was language.
• 3:30
  SPEAKER_00: He had an extraordinary ear for the way people spoke,
• 3:35
  SPEAKER_00: the turn of a phrase,
• 3:37
  SPEAKER_00: the rhythm of a conversation, the humor tucked into an ordinary remark.
• 3:45
  SPEAKER_00: His lyrics could be sophisticated, but they also felt remarkably unforced.
• 3:52
  SPEAKER_00: Think of Accentuate the Positive.
• 3:55
  SPEAKER_00: With music by Harold Arlent, even the title has energy.
• 4:00
  SPEAKER_00: It sounds like advice someone might give you when you need a little encouragement.
• 4:06
  SPEAKER_00: Then think of Skylark with music by Hoagie Carmichael.
• 4:10
  SPEAKER_00: Suddenly, we're in a very different emotional world.
• 4:14
  SPEAKER_00: Quiet, searching, full of questions and hope.
• 4:19
  SPEAKER_00: The same writer could give us exuberance and tenderness,
• 4:24
  SPEAKER_00: wit and Mercer's words invite you into a feeling.
• 4:30
  SPEAKER_00: They give you a place to begin.
• 4:32
  SPEAKER_00: Some of those places came from his childhood summers at Vernon View,
• 4:37
  SPEAKER_00: his family's summer home near Savannah's tidal waterways.
• 4:42
  SPEAKER_00: Imagine the marsh grass moving in the breeze,
• 4:46
  SPEAKER_00: the light changing across the water,
• 4:48
  SPEAKER_00: trees draped in Spanish moss,
• 4:52
  SPEAKER_00: a landscape that seems quiet, Until you begin to listen.
• 4:56
  SPEAKER_00: Those surroundings became part of his imagination.
• 5:00
  SPEAKER_00: So did the people around him.
• 5:01
  SPEAKER_00: The speech and music of Savannah's Black communities,
• 5:06
  SPEAKER_00: including Gullah Geechee voices,
• 5:09
  SPEAKER_00: were important influences in the world he grew up hearing.
• 5:14
  SPEAKER_00: Those traditions had their own richness and story.
• 5:19
  SPEAKER_00: They helped shape his ear for rhythm, expression, And the music within language.
• 5:26
  SPEAKER_00: Before he became a songwriter, Mercer was learning how to pay attention.
• 5:31
  SPEAKER_00: And I think that's one of the loveliest things about his story.
• 5:37
  SPEAKER_00: The beginnings of his art were all around him.
• 5:40
  SPEAKER_00: He listened, he remembered, and later he found words for what stayed with him.
• 5:48
  SPEAKER_00: Then there were trains.
• 5:50
  SPEAKER_00: For a young dreamer,
• 5:52
  SPEAKER_00: A train could mean adventure,
• 5:54
  SPEAKER_00: possibility,
• 5:56
  SPEAKER_00: somewhere else, but it could also mean leaving, distance, someone you missed.
• 6:04
  SPEAKER_00: Listen to I Thought About You with music by Jimmy Van Usen
• 6:10
  SPEAKER_00: and notice how travel becomes a setting for remembering someone.
• 6:16
  SPEAKER_00: The journey moves forward, but the mind keeps returning to one person.
• 6:22
  SPEAKER_00: That's such a familiar experience, isn't it?
• 6:25
  SPEAKER_00: We can be looking at something entirely new and still be thinking about someone far away.
• 6:32
  SPEAKER_00: Mercer had a gift for giving that feeling a shape, a river, a bird, a passing landscape.
• 6:41
  SPEAKER_00: Something you can picture becomes a way of expressing something You can hardly explain.
• 6:48
  SPEAKER_00: His career eventually took him to Hollywood.
• 6:51
  SPEAKER_00: He worked with some of the finest composers of his day,
• 6:56
  SPEAKER_00: including Hoagy Carmichael,
• 6:59
  SPEAKER_00: Harold Arlen, Jimmy Van Heusen, Jerome Kern, Richard Whiting, and Henry Mancini.
• 7:08
  SPEAKER_00: He won four Academy Awards and helped found Capitol Records.
• 7:15
  SPEAKER_00: It's an astonishing list of achievements.
• 7:18
  SPEAKER_00: Yet, when I listen to his songs, what stays with me is often something much smaller.
• 7:26
  SPEAKER_00: An image, a memory, a feeling of wanting to be somewhere or with someone you can't quite reach.
• 7:36
  SPEAKER_00: Which brings us to Moon River.
• 7:40
  SPEAKER_00: Henry Mancini wrote the music.
• 7:44
  SPEAKER_00: Mercer wrote the words for the film Breakfast at Tiffany's.
• 7:49
  SPEAKER_00: The film belongs to New York, but the river in that lyric belongs to Savannah.
• 7:57
  SPEAKER_00: Mercer once explained that the wild bushes and berries along the river,
• 8:03
  SPEAKER_00: where he grew up,
• 8:05
  SPEAKER_00: the huckleberries especially, stayed with him and found their way into the song.
• 8:12
  SPEAKER_00: And after the song's success,
• 8:14
  SPEAKER_00: The tidal river near his family summer home was renamed Moon River.
• 8:22
  SPEAKER_00: So when I hear the song, I can picture the waterways here around Savannah.
• 8:29
  SPEAKER_00: That's how it reaches me.
• 8:31
  SPEAKER_00: There's a sense of distance and possibility in it.
• 8:35
  SPEAKER_00: The pull of a wider world and the wish to share the journey.
• 8:40
  SPEAKER_00: Perhaps why the song can feel so personal.
• 8:44
  SPEAKER_00: To so many different listeners.
• 8:48
  SPEAKER_00: We each bring our own river.
• 8:51
  SPEAKER_00: Our own dream.
• 8:53
  SPEAKER_00: Our own memories.
• 8:55
  SPEAKER_00: The more I learn about Johnny Mercer,
• 8:58
  SPEAKER_00: the more I admire his ability to find beauty in ordinary things.
• 9:05
  SPEAKER_00: I understand something of what it means to dream of a life in music.
• 9:11
  SPEAKER_00: I've loved songs for most of my life.
• 9:14
  SPEAKER_00: And the older I get,
• 9:16
  SPEAKER_00: the more I appreciate the people who gave us words and melodies
• 9:22
  SPEAKER_00: that help us understand our own experiences.
• 9:27
  SPEAKER_00: A song can take a feeling we thought belonged only to us
• 9:32
  SPEAKER_00: and let us know someone else has felt it too.
• 9:37
  SPEAKER_00: Most you could do that with a conversation,
• 9:40
  SPEAKER_00: a summer afternoon, Or the thought of someone far away.
• 9:46
  SPEAKER_00: He paid attention to life.
• 9:48
  SPEAKER_00: And what he noticed became something lasting.
• 9:52
  SPEAKER_00: That feels like an invitation for all of us.
• 9:56
  SPEAKER_00: To listen a little more closely.
• 10:00
  SPEAKER_00: To notice the beauty we might otherwise hurry past.
• 10:04
  SPEAKER_00: If you'd like to spend a little time with Mercer after this episode, start with three songs.
• 10:12
  SPEAKER_00: Skylark, listen to the questions and the longing underneath.
• 10:20
  SPEAKER_00: I thought about you.
• 10:22
  SPEAKER_00: Notice how the world outside becomes connected to a memory.
• 10:27
  SPEAKER_00: And Moon River, ask yourself what that journey brings to mind for you.
• 10:35
  SPEAKER_00: For a change of mood, try Mercia's own recording of Accentuate the Positive.
• 10:42
  SPEAKER_00: It's a chance to hear the songwriter's voice as well as his words.
• 10:47
  SPEAKER_00: As you listen, notice the images that return.
• 10:51
  SPEAKER_00: Nature, travel, dreams, and home.
• 10:57
  SPEAKER_00: You may begin to hear familiar songs a little differently.
• 11:02
  SPEAKER_00: I read every note.
• 11:06
  SPEAKER_00: Johnny Loser wrote about love, hope, regret.
• 11:11
  SPEAKER_00: Beauty and Dreams.
• 11:14
  SPEAKER_00: And so much of it began with a boy from Savannah who listened carefully to people,
• 11:20
  SPEAKER_00: to music, and to his own imagination.
• 11:25
  SPEAKER_00: Those early impressions traveled with him,
• 11:29
  SPEAKER_00: and through his songs they've traveled to the rest of us,
• 11:33
  SPEAKER_00: and we've been listening ever since.
• 11:38
  SPEAKER_00: If you've enjoyed spending this time with Johnny Mercer,
• 11:42
  SPEAKER_00: I hope you'll join me for the next story.
• 11:46
  SPEAKER_00: Follow Timeless Songs on Apple Podcasts or Spotify,
• 11:51
  SPEAKER_00: or subscribe to my Timeless Songs blog on Substack,
• 11:57
  SPEAKER_00: and the stories will come straight into your inbox.
• 12:02
  SPEAKER_00: You'll find the links in the show notes.
• 12:06
  SPEAKER_00: Choose the way you like to listen or read and join me in keeping these beautiful songs alive.
• 12:14
  SPEAKER_00: I'm Eileen Ponich with a song in my heart.
• 12:20
  [music]