Mercerized Music

"Every time I shave I cut my Adam's apple." This plaintive observation burst one day from Johnny Mercer, a nondescript, drawling Southerner who had been hanging onto the fringes of Broadway at the tail end of the gin & depression era. From force of habit, Johnny Mercer made a song out of it. The song made a hit.

For years Johnny Mercer had been making songs out of bits of casual conversation. People who heard them just couldn't help singing them, they sounded so natural. Eddie Cantor, who ordered a batch of extra choruses to Every Time I Shave, never got around to singing them. But Sidewalk Poet Mercer got a job doing lyrics for the Garrick Gaieties, did another song called Out of Breath and Scared to Death of You. He married a pretty Gaieties chorus girl. One day she looked fondly at him, remarked, "You must have been a beautiful baby." Johnny Mercer reached for his pencil, made a song out of that one too. In fact, he is still paying canny Mrs. Mercer royalties on it.

Later Johnny wrote I'm an Old Cowhand, On Behalf of the Visiting Firemen, Jeepers Creepers, Lazy Bones and Skylark. With half the U.S. mumbling his 42nd-Street plain chant in its sleep, Mercer moved on to Hollywood. Blues in the Night, written for a Warner Brothers musical, sold over a million copies. By last week another Mercer opus. Strip Polka (for which the versatile Johnny had written the tune as well as the words), was No. 2 on Variety's list of bestsellers. Its homely refrain:

There's a burlesque theater where the

gang loves to go,

To see Queenie, the cutie of the bur-

lesque show,

And the thrill of the evening is when

out Queenie skips,

And the band plays the Polka while she

strips. . . .

"Take it off," "Take it off." Soon it's all

you can hear,

But she's always a lady even in panto-

mime. . . .

So she stops! And always just in time.*

Today Johnny Mercer lives in a Hollywood bungalow, tailors lyrics to fit the suavely hocketing voice of his friend Bing Crosby, rolls up between $50,000 and $85,000 a year in cinema lyric contracts and ASCAP royalties. A one-finger pianist, he does his composing with the help of Tunesmith Harold Arlen. After a two-hour stretch with Tunesmith Arlen, he usually knocks off for an afternoon of golf. Says Johnny: "If I get a good title and the first couple of lines within two hours, that's a damn good day. . . . Most of my titles and lyrics I make up in my head as I drive. When this gas rationing cuts my driving down I don't know what the hell I'll do for inspiration."

*Reproduced by permission of the copyright owner, Edwin H. Morris & Co.

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