Johnny Mercer

Johnny Mercer
Johnny Mercer, c. 1947
Background information
Birth name	John Herndon Mercer
Born	(1909-11-18)November 18, 1909 Savannah, Georgia, U.S.
Died	June 25, 1976(1976-06-25) (aged 66) Hollywood, California, U.S.
Occupation(s)	Songwriter, lyricist
Years active	1930–1976
Associated acts	Richard A. Whiting Bing Crosby Margaret Whiting The Pied Pipers Bobby Darin Harry Warren Harold Arlen Hoagy Carmichael Gene de Paul Henry Mancini

John Herndon "Johnny" Mercer (November 18, 1909 – June 25, 1976) was an American lyricist, songwriter and singer. He was also the founder of Capitol Records.

He is best known as a lyricist, but he also composed music. 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 fifteen hundred songs, including compositions for movies and Broadway shows. He received nineteen Academy Award nominations, and won four Best Original Song Oscars.

Mercer was born in Savannah, Georgia. His father, George Anderson Mercer, was a prominent attorney and real estate developer, and his mother, Lillian Elizabeth (née Ciucevich), George Mercer’s secretary and then second wife, was the daughter of a Croatian immigrant father and a mother with Irish ancestry. Lillian's father was a merchant seaman who ran the Union blockade during the U.S. Civil War. Mercer was George's fourth son, first by Lillian. His great-grandfather was Confederate General Hugh Weedon Mercer and he was a direct descendant of American Revolutionary War General Hugh Mercer, a Scottish soldier-physician who died at the Battle of Princeton. Mercer was also a distant cousin of General George S. Patton. The construction of Mercer House in Savannah was started by General Hugh Weedon Mercer in 1860 (although never finished by him; the next owners of the house finished it), later the home of Jim Williams, whose trial for murder was the centerpiece of John Berendt's book Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil. Neither the General, nor Mercer himself, ever lived there.