The Ira Awards Part 5
Sunday, November 15th, 2009
(If you missed the beginning of this series, please start with The IRA Awards Part 1)
Johnny Mercer! Oh my goodness, what a lyricist! He was also a popular singer who recorded his own songs as well as those written by others. From the mid-1930s through the mid-1950s, many of the songs Mercer wrote and performed were among the most popular hits of the time. He wrote the lyrics to more than a thousand songs, including compositions for movies and Broadway shows. He received nineteen Academy Award nominations and won four. Mercer was also a co-founder of Capitol Records.
Among his thousands of songs were the following classic standards: Come Rain Or Come Shine, Ac-cent-tchu-ate the Positive, Autumn Leaves, Fools Rush In, I’m Old Fashioned with Jerome Kern, I Remember You, Moon River with Henry Mancini, Skylark with a great melody by Hoagy Charmichael, That Old Black Magic, One For My Baby (And One More For The Road) with Harold Arlen, Satin Doll with Duke Ellington, and On The Atchison Topeka And The Santa Fe.
