Photo of the Day: Johnny Mercer Statue, Savannah, GA

The last time I visited Savannah was three years ago this month, for an afternoon, on a vacation spent mostly in Hilton Head, SC. 

But, in this coastal city of distinctive Southern charm, I was delighted to come across, on my way to somewhere else, something I never expected to see, in Ellis Square. I’ve been waiting three years to use this photo of an outdoor sculpture I snapped then, and what better occasion than on what would have been the 108^th birthday of Johnny Mercer?

I never grasped the full extent of this lyricist’s contribution to the Great American Songbook until I saw Clint Eastwood’s film adaptation of Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil, which uses—more effectively than anything else in that often disappointing movie—a soundtrack filled with classic Mercer songs. But really, his songs had been flowing slowly into my consciousness, much like the lazy Georgia rivers this Savannah native loved as a boy.

In the early 1960s, Mercer won consecutive Best Song Oscars for “Moon River” and “Days of Wine and Roses” to go along with two others he had won previously. But that comes nowhere near to conveying the breadth, beauty and verve of his work. Think also of “Skylark,” “Blues in the Night,” “Ac-Cent-Tchu-Ate The Positive,” "Jeepers Creepers," “That Old Black Magic,” “One For My Baby," "Autumn Leaves," “Satin Doll" and “Summer Wind.”

Outside of his lyrics, Mercer—unique among lyricists and composers in the golden age of the Great American Songbook—also made his mark as quite a good singer in his own right and an astute business executive and talent scout, as co-founder of Capitol Records, which he helped establish 75 years ago.

Back in October 1999, on a longer vacation in Savannah, I had made sure to see Bonaventure Cemetery, where Mercer was buried in 1976. While it’s a lovely spot, his gravesite is, of course, a somber affair.

That was part of the reason why the Ellis Square bronze statue—unveiled in 2009, in commemoration of the centennial of Mercer’s birth—pleased me so much when I viewed it. 

Sculptor Susie Chisholm placed it not far from Savannah’s City Market, a setting with an active nightlife and music. Here looking up from his newspaper, as if you’ve just caught him by surprise, wearing a hat and a Huck Finn grin (even down to the gap in his teeth), is a guy with all the warmth and charm in the world—with not merely one song in his heart, but 1,400.