{"id":19358,"date":"2009-11-18T07:41:03","date_gmt":"2009-11-18T12:41:03","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/?p=19358"},"modified":"2009-11-18T13:00:18","modified_gmt":"2009-11-18T18:00:18","slug":"johnny-mercer-astrology","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/daily-astrology\/johnny-mercer-astrology\/","title":{"rendered":"Johnny Mercer at 100"},"content":{"rendered":"

You’re about to read my old friend Michael Ackerman say that Johnny Mercer was the best American songwriter of all times. But if that’s true why isn’t he a household word? All Belgians have heard of Jacques Brel and all Brits have heard of Paul McCartney. Mercer was not a pop star; he was someone mostly behind the scenes who wrote many of the standards you find in those big books of Broadway and film show tunes. You’ve heard many of his songs: “You Must Have Been a Beautiful Baby,\u201d “Hooray for Hollywood” and “Moon River.” In other words, the songs you thought were around forever. And you’ve played lots of records published by Capitol Records, which he founded. Everything has a beginning.<\/p>\n

\"John<\/a>
John Herndon "Johnny" Mercer (November 18, 1909 \u2013 June 25, 1976) was an American songwriter and singer.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

I tend to be ignorant of culture, but it’s not just me; his birth data isn’t listed in Astrotheme, or even Astrodatabank. But — now we know. And today happens to be the 100th anniversary of his birth. I discovered this while simultaneously gabbing with Michael and googling yesterday morning.<\/p>\n

Really, there is no explaining someone with this kind of unusual talent astrologically; my preference is to look to his chart for information about astrology itself. (And we do learn something about the cardinal signs, something we already knew.) It would be great if we had his birth time; putting his planets into houses would be a big help toward helping us have a clear picture of who he is. But we do have planets in signs: here’s a bit:<\/p>\n

Mercer was a Scorpio with an Aquarius Moon (Neil Young has this configuration, which provides intellect and emotional capacity in equal measure). His outer planets are in signs distinctly\u00a0unfamiliar to most astrologers today \u2014 Pluto in Gemini, Neptune in Cancer, opposite Uranus in Capricorn \u2014 exactly opposite, to one degree, which to me is his songwriting aspect. True, everyone was born with this doorway in their chart in that era; Johnny Mercer came through the door.<\/p>\n

In 1909, Eris was still in Pisces, conjunct Nessus; when Mercer was born, Mars was there too, and it’s in the last degree of Pisces — the degree of the shapeshifter. Pisces is one of the places you look to for musical talent, and this is an odd mix but it\u2019s an energy source, and the imagery fits. Many people experience Nessus as the dark side, and many songs are about the woes of life.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

He had Capricorn: Uranus, Vesta, Venus and Pallas in that sign, which is business acumen; and Jupiter in Libra opposite Saturn in Aries, aaah — which happens to square the Uranus-Neptune opposition \u2014 so he had the cardinal signs fully activated, which is energy, innovation and public contact.<\/p>\n

Here is an interesting bit out of his Wikipedia entry: Mercer\u2019s exposure to black music was perhaps unique among the white songwriters of his generation. As a child, Mercer had African-American playmates and servants, and he listened to the fishermen and vendors about him, who spoke and sang in the Creole dialect known as \u201cGeechee\u201d. He was also attracted to black church services. Mercer later stated, \u201cSongs always fascinated me more than anything\u201d. He never had formal musical training but was singing in a choir by six and at eleven or twelve he had memorized almost all of the songs he had heard and he had become curious about who had written them. He once asked his brother who the best songwriter was, and his brother said Irving Berlin is\u00a0among the best of Tin Pan Alley.<\/p>\n

{Bruce Springsteen disagrees on that particular point — he once pointed out that Woodie Guthrie felt that “God Bless America” is a bit of nationalist propaganda. Guthrie wrote “This Land is Your Land” in an angry reply.) However, I digress…<\/p>\n

I will post Mercer’s chart below, which by the way is not based on a real birth time; it\u2019s my best guess. Here’s what my friend Michael, a lawyer who plays guitar, bass and drums, has to say about Mercer.<\/p>\n

Johnny Mercer was the greatest American songwriter who ever lived. Yes, arguably even better than Bob Dylan.\u00a0 Because Mercer died over thirty years ago and started writing hit songs in the 1930s, many are not well versed in his work today.\u00a0 Yet his songs helped define popular music from the 1940s through the early 1960\u2019s and are still some of the most performed and beloved standards today.<\/p>\n

\"Click<\/a>
Click on image to enlarge.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

You may think you\u2019re unfamiliar with Johnny Mercer or his music but actually you probably know more of his work and his creations than you\u2019d think.\u00a0 If you grew up watching Looney Tunes, as I did, you surely know \u201cYou Must Have Been A Beautiful Baby\u201d or \u201cJeepers Creepers\u201d or \u201cBlues in the Night\u201d (the vulture who sings \u201cMy mama done told me, bring home something for dinner\u201d is sung to the tune of Blues in the Night\u2019s opening lines).\u00a0 If you\u2019ve seen the film \u201cBreakfast at Tiffany\u2019s\u201d you\u2019ve heard Mercer\u2019s song \u201cMoon River.\u201d\u00a0 Surely everyone knows \u201cHooray for Hollywood,\u201d Mercer wrote the lyrics for that.<\/p>\n

If you ever saw Sammy Davis, Jr. perform, he almost certainly performed his classic version of \u201cThat Old Black Magic\u201d which Mercer wrote. My own first dance at my wedding was to the tune of \u201cCome Rain or Come Shine,\u201d a Mercer composition, which was used as the theme of the Scorcese film \u201cThe King of Comedy\u201d (as performed brilliantly by Ray Charles) and was a \u201cturntable hit\u201d at radio in the early 1990\u2019s as performed by Don Henley (from MTV Unplugged).<\/p>\n

Chances are you were sung to sleep by someone at some point with Mercer\u2019s lovely \u201cHit the Road to Dreamland.\u201d Or you might have seen the Clint Eastwood movie \u201cMidnight in the Garden of Good and Evil\u201d about Savannah, Georgia (Mercer\u2019s hometown) which featured Mercer as a songwriter and as a presence.\u00a0 Certainly, you\u2019re familiar with Capitol Records, home of the Beatles, Beach Boys, Frank Sinatra, Nat \u201cKing\u201d Cole, Steve Miller, Pink Floyd and Bob Seger among many others — Mercer was the founder of the company.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s sort of the tip of iceberg. As if that\u2019s not enough, Mercer wrote the greatest saloon song ever. As popularized by Frank Sinatra, \u201cOne for My Baby (and One More For The Road)\u201d clearly comes from the age before the breathalyzer. In Mercer\u2019s time, men buried their sorrows in drink (ever see an episode of \u201cMad Men\u201d?) and the protagonist in \u201cOne for My Baby\u201d is no exception, telling his tale of broken-hearted woe to Joe, the bartender.\u00a0 To me the great thing about the song, and most of Mercer\u2019s songs, is its conversational tone.\u00a0 It never feels forced into rhyme, but the language lilts and rolls out very naturally, and if you\u2019ve ever tried to write a song you know how difficult that can be.<\/p>\n

Mercer was perhaps the king of the novelty song.\u00a0 \u201cSave the Bones for Henry Jones,\u201d a hit for the Mills Brothers, describes a banquet meal where there\u2019s everything but you\u2019re warned to \u201csave the bones, for Henry Jones because Henry don\u2019t eat no meat.\u201d\u00a0 \u201cJeepers Creepers,\u201d perhaps best known in the Louis Armstrong version, sprang from a slang phrase popular at the time which was, in essence, a substitute for saying \u201cJesus Christ.\u201d<\/p>\n

Maybe you know the Frankie Lymon and the Teenagers version of \u201cGoody Goody,\u201d Mercer wrote that too.\u00a0 It\u2019s an amazing song which predates Dylan\u2019s making bitterness\u00a0 a mainstream subject in popular music\u2014\u201cSo you met someone who set you back on your heels, goody goody, so you met someone and now you know how it feels, goody goody,\u201d all set to a bouncy feel good melody\u00a0 Perhaps my favorite Mercer song, and that says a lot, is \u201cAc-Cent-Tchu-Ate the Positive\u201d in which you\u2019re told to \u201deliminate the negative.\u201d\u00a0 Mercer perfectly captured the positive feel of the music and this is the song I listen to to lift my spirits when they need lifting.\u00a0 It\u2019s like bottled happiness.<\/p>\n

But Mercer not only wrote novelty songs, he wrote classics like \u201cSummer Wind,\u201d \u201cSatin Doll\u201d (he added the lyrics after the tune was a hit for Duke Ellington) and \u201cGlow Worm.\u201d\u00a0 A personal favorite of mine is Mercer\u2019s \u201cI\u2019m an Old Cowhand,\u201d which might be corny when sung by a movie cowboy, but as performed by the saxophone colossus Sonny Rollins on his \u201cWay Out West\u201d album, is the swingingest of jazz tunes (and Mercer wrote not only the lyrics to this song but the melody as well).\u00a0 Mercer\u2019s and Hoagy Carmichael\u2019s\u00a0 \u201cIn the Cool, Cool, Cool of the Evening\u201d similarly is a great marriage of lyric and melody producing the consummate swinging jazz tune.\u00a0 Mercer often wrote for films, which is one of the reasons his songs were so popular (so many people went to the cinema in that era that millions heard his songs even without radio airplay) and his songs \u201cThe Days of Wine and Roses\u201d and the \u201cAtchison, Topeka and the Santa Fe\u201d (the latter magnificently performed by Judy Garland).<\/p>\n

It\u2019s Johnny Mercer\u2019s one hundredth birthday today so it\u2019s the perfect time to familiarize yourself with a uniquely American treasure, the life and work of Johnny Mercer.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

You’re about to read my old friend Michael Ackerman say that Johnny Mercer was the best American songwriter of all times. But if that’s true why isn’t he a household word? All Belgians have heard of Jacques Brel and all Brits have heard of Paul McCartney. Mercer was not a pop star; he was someone … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"generate_page_header":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19358"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=19358"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19358\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=19358"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=19358"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=19358"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}