“Oh skylark
Have you seen a valley green with spring?
Where my heart can go a-journeying
Over the shadows and the rain
To a blossom-covered lane.”—“Skylark,” lyrics by Johnny Mercer, music by Hoagy Carmichael (1942)
Johnny Mercer, the incomparable lyricist whose centennial we celebrate today, might be the most unique and multi-faceted contributor to the Great American Songbook. Consider:
* His songs reflect the South of his youth, not the urban Northeast of the Gershwins, Rodgers, Hammerstein, Hart, Berlin, Arlen, and Kern;
* Besides writing songs for others, he had hits singing his own tunes, anticipating by more than a decade the singer-songwriter trend of the rock ‘r’ roll era;
* He not only wrote lyrics, but in a number of cases took on a second role as composer;
* He worked with more than 170 collaborators;
* He became a record-company executive, founding Capital Records; and
* He even started in show business as an actor (which is why he left his beloved South for New York in the first place).
In his vast song catalogue, though, two tunes, far from the jaunty “Jeepers Creepers” and “Ac-cent-u-ate the Positive,” compel my fascination and admiration the most: “Skylark” and his Oscar-winning collaboration with Henry Mancini, “Days of Wine and Roses.”
Both songs are suffused with a melancholy that those who knew well the aristocratic, affable Georgia native sensed lay not too far below his surface.
What jumps out at you in these simple but mesmerizing lyrics are the pointed literary allusions and the evocation of nature. “Skylark” brings to mind the Shelley poem, and the “door marked ‘Nevermore’" in “Days” reverberates like the familiar refrain from a far more pronounced Southern depressive, Edgar Allan Poe.
All the great vocal versions I know of “Skylark” are by women: Ella Fitzgerald, Linda Ronstadt, K.D. Lang, and Maude Maggart. Can any male give such tremulous expression to these lyrics seeking something or someone who can lead to a rebirth of the heart?
Have you seen a valley green with spring?
Where my heart can go a-journeying
Over the shadows and the rain
To a blossom-covered lane.”—“Skylark,” lyrics by Johnny Mercer, music by Hoagy Carmichael (1942)
Johnny Mercer, the incomparable lyricist whose centennial we celebrate today, might be the most unique and multi-faceted contributor to the Great American Songbook. Consider:
* His songs reflect the South of his youth, not the urban Northeast of the Gershwins, Rodgers, Hammerstein, Hart, Berlin, Arlen, and Kern;
* Besides writing songs for others, he had hits singing his own tunes, anticipating by more than a decade the singer-songwriter trend of the rock ‘r’ roll era;
* He not only wrote lyrics, but in a number of cases took on a second role as composer;
* He worked with more than 170 collaborators;
* He became a record-company executive, founding Capital Records; and
* He even started in show business as an actor (which is why he left his beloved South for New York in the first place).
In his vast song catalogue, though, two tunes, far from the jaunty “Jeepers Creepers” and “Ac-cent-u-ate the Positive,” compel my fascination and admiration the most: “Skylark” and his Oscar-winning collaboration with Henry Mancini, “Days of Wine and Roses.”
Both songs are suffused with a melancholy that those who knew well the aristocratic, affable Georgia native sensed lay not too far below his surface.
What jumps out at you in these simple but mesmerizing lyrics are the pointed literary allusions and the evocation of nature. “Skylark” brings to mind the Shelley poem, and the “door marked ‘Nevermore’" in “Days” reverberates like the familiar refrain from a far more pronounced Southern depressive, Edgar Allan Poe.
All the great vocal versions I know of “Skylark” are by women: Ella Fitzgerald, Linda Ronstadt, K.D. Lang, and Maude Maggart. Can any male give such tremulous expression to these lyrics seeking something or someone who can lead to a rebirth of the heart?
“Skylark” is filled with uncertainty (“I don’t know if you can find these things”), but the tone of “Days of Wine and Roses” is far graver. Each stanza is marked by a shift from present to past tense, the lament of a charmer who, in the blink of an eye, realizes that something has been irretrievably lost.
The lyrics, glimmering and evanescent, brim with barely subdued regret---undoubtedly because, as we now realize, courtesy of Philip Furia’s well-researched, sensitively argued biography, Skylark: The Life and Times of Johnny Mercer, the lyricist was alcoholic himself. This perfect Southern gentleman could reveal a nasty side after a few drinks—lunging at longtime friends, even abusing his wife Ginger in front of others.
Mercer claimed that, after initial confusion on how to approach them, the lyrics came to him in a rush. (“God wrote that lyric. All I did was take it down.”) Altogether, discounting the repeated second stanza, the song lasts only 57 words and six lines, disappearing as fast as the “child at play” it summons in one of his typical reminders of innocence. But, given the shattering subject matter, it must have hurt to write every word.
Five years ago, on a business trip, I met a lawyer, several years younger than me, who was an aficionado of movies and their theme songs. One he knew especially well, even when he was deep in his cups on that long flight, was “Days of Wine and Roses.”
Closing his eyes, softly slurring the words, the lawyer still managed, after his umpteenth drink, to recall every syllable of the song.
I’ve bought the CD tie-in for the recent TCM documentary, Johnny Mercer: “The Dream’s on Me.” Thankfully, it employs a host of terrific younger singers—Bono, Audra MacDonald, Maude Maggart, and Jamie Cullum—to complement classic interpreters of his work like Tony Bennett (who recorded 42 of Mercer’s tunes), Ella Fitzgerald, Ray Charles, and Mercer’s good friend (and initial romantic rival for Ginger), Bing Crosby.
The film Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil disappointed me, but the soundtrack, filled with Mercer tunes, was enthralling. So 10 years ago, when I vacationed in Savannah, his birthplace, I made sure to stop at Bonaventure Cemetery, where the lyricist is buried, at the family plot.
An anthology edited by Patrick Allen, Literary Savannah, features an unpublished Mercer tune about Savannah that includes the line, “Where the Spanish moss hangs lazy on the trees.” That image comes to mind when thinking about his gravesite, which is near the Wilmington River, inspiration for another one of his great film songs, “Moon River,” from Breakfast at Tiffany’s.
Mercer’s niece, explaining her often tortured uncle, remarked that his heart “didn’t have a home.” Moving from the coastal setting that inspired his greatest work left him with the yearning and dull ache in the heart evoked in “Skylark” and “Days of Wine and Roses.” At Bonaventure Cemetery, I think, that restlessness finally ceased in the environment he loved.
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