Portrait of Johnny: The Life of John Herndon Mercer
- ISBN-10
- 0307489698
- ISBN-13
- 9780307489692
- Category
- Biography & Autobiography
- Pages
- 384
- Language
- English
- Published
- 2009-08-19
- Publisher
- Pantheon
- Author
- Gene Lees
Description
An intimate biography of the great songwriter, this is also a deeply affectionate memoir by one of Johnny Mercer’s best friends. “Moon River,” “Laura,” “Skylark,” ”That Old Black Magic,” “One for My Baby,” “Accentuate the Positive,” “Satin Doll,” “Days of Wine and Roses,” “Something’s Gotta Give”—the honor roll of Mercer’s songs is endless. Both Oscar Hammerstein II and Alan Jay Lerner called him the greatest lyricist in the English language, and he was perhaps the best-loved and certainly the best-known songwriter of his generation. But Mercer was also a complicated and private man. A scion of an important Savannah family that had lost its fortune, he became a successful Hollywood songwriter (his primary partners included Harold Arlen and Jerome Kern), a hit recording artist, and, as co-founder of Capitol Records, a successful businessman, but he remained forever nostalgic for his idealized childhood (with his “huckleberry friend”). A gentleman, a nasty drunk, funny, tender, melancholic, tormented—Mercer was a man immensely talented yet plagued by self-doubt, much admired and loved but never really understood. In music historian and songwriter Gene Lees, Mercer has his perfect biographer, who deals tactfully but directly with Mercer’s complicated relationships with his domineering mother; his tormenting wife, Ginger; and Judy Garland, who was the great love of his life. Lees’s highly personal examination of Mercer’s life is sensitive as only the work of a friend of many years could be to the conflicts in Mercer’s nature. And it is filled with insights into Mercer’s work that could come only from a fellow lyricist (whose own lyrics were much admired by Mercer). A poignant, candid, revelatory portrait of Johnny.
Get the book
Other editions
Similar books
-
Johnny Paradise
By Robert BernardoLittle Johnny had been painted at birthhis portrait hung to dry on the wall of a perfect stranger.
-
Johnny Appleseed: The Man, the Myth, the American Story
By Howard MeansJohn Chapman comes alive here and it is a thrilling experience to escape the specific gravity of the decades of myth” (Ken Burns). This portrait of Johnny Appleseed restores the flesh-and-blood man beneath the many myths.
-
Anchored In Love: An Intimate Portrait of June Carter Cash
By John Carter CashFrom his mother's birth in the rural mountains to her moving and very public death.
-
Johnny Golightly Comes Home: A Portrait of Eccentricity
By Pat HopkinsThis was the fi rst of several identities that the artist assumed. Pat Hopkins tells the story of this eccentric man in a personal story that at times becomes intertwined with his own story.
-
Johnny Depp Photo Album
By Christopher Heardohnny would next assume one of the most dazzling roles of his life – Raoul Duke, aka Hunter S. Thompson, in the screen adaptation of Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas. Johnny was a big fan of the book, and a big fan of Thompson.
-
Johnny Hallyday: Portrait of a Legend
By Jean-François ChenutTelling you everything you need to know about the man, his music and his performance, this book contains rare removable facsimile memorabilia, including posters, tickets and more.
-
66185 10 4 65: Johnny Cash Mug Shot Horizontal - Journal Sketchbook
By Tony RubinoPop art comes in many forms. I consider this one of them. You'll find here an ACTUAL, REAL mugshot of Johnny Cash. Johnny Cash was arrested in October 1965 when...
-
Johnny Cash: The Biography
By Michael StreissguthHe amorously pursued sixteen-year-old cast member Lorrie Collins, but appears to have spent more time under the artistic spell of singers Tex Ritter, Merle Travis, and Johnny Western, men who reawakened his interest in the Western ...
-
Johnny Haynes: Portrait of a Football Genius
By James GardnerJohnny Haynes: Portrait of a Football Genius is the biography of one of England's greatest ever footballers--a player described by Pele as "the greatest passer of a ball I have ever seen.
-
I Still Miss Someone: Friends and Family Remember Johnny Cash
By Hugh WaddellIn I Still Miss Someone, more than forty people offer their remembrances of the Man in Black and provide an insider's view of the heart and soul of the friend they knew simply as John.