Too Marvelous for Words: The Lyrics of Johnny Mercer

At a time when most great songwriters – Irving Berlin, Richard Rodgers and Larry Hart, Jerome Kern and Oscar Hammerstein – were New Yorkers, Jewish immigrants, Johnny Mercer was an anomaly: an Episcopalian choir boy from Savannah whose prominent family could trace its ancestry back to a general who served under George
Washington. In this presentation we present some of Mercer’s lyrics and what makes them witty and poignant, how they fit the music, and what, if anything makes them “southern.”