Johnny Mercer in the Southern Quote

This southerner was born in Savannah, Georgia on the eighteenth of November, 1909 with a love for music in his veins. If you can believe it, his aunt used to say he was humming music when he was six months old. Okay. Perhaps this will be more believable. As a young boy Johnny loved to sing in church Sunday morning and spend his Sunday afternoons at the nearby park listening to the sweet sounds of a local band that played the music of Irving Berlin. By eleven he was memorizing the lyrics to every song he heard and at fifteen he composed his first tune, a song he called, “Sister Susie Strut Your Stuff.”

After graduating from high school in Georgia, Johnny moved to New York City. For a while he was torn between acting and singing, but then in 1930 he wrote his first hit song, “Out of Breath, Scared to Death Of You” for a Broadway show he had tried and failed to land a part in. The country boy was finding his way. Eight years later Johnny Mercer, the laid back Southerner with his snappy lyrics and jazzy delivery had become a successful singer songwriter, recording duets with the likes of Bing Crosby and singing on the great Benny Goodman’s radio program.

Johnny Mercer went on to become an Academy Award winning recording artist who wrote over 1,500 songs. You know his work, even if you don’t know his name. From “You Must Have Been A Beautiful Baby” and “Jeepers Creepers” to “Moon River”, Johnny’s music helped shape the industry and left it’s mark on the Great American Songbook.

In today’s Southern Quote we celebrate the career and the lyrics of this true son of the South who once wrote, “You’ve gotta accentuate the positive, eliminate the negative, latch on to the affirmative and don’t mess with Mister In-Between.”