12 Things You Should Know About Johnny Mercer

As we reported earlier on Thursday (Feb. 22), Diane Warren is this year’s recipient of the Johnny Mercer Award, the top honor given by the Songwriters Hall of Fame. Warren joins a long list of Mercer Award recipients which includes Burt Bacharach & Hal David, Paul Simon, Stephen Sondheim, Billy Joel, Stevie Wonder, Smokey Robinson, Dolly Parton and Neil Diamond.

The Mercer Award is reserved for a songwriter or songwriting team who has already been inducted into the SHOF and whose body of work upholds the high standards set by Mercer, wrote dozens of hits from the 1930s through the 1960s.

Warren will be the fourth woman to receive the award on her own, following Carole King (2002), Dolly Parton (2007) and Carole Bayer Sager (2019). In addition, three songwriting teams with a female partner have won the honor – Betty Comden & Adolph Green (1991), Alan & Marilyn Bergman (1997), and Barry Mann & Cynthia Weil (2011).

Mercer died in 1976, so you can be excused if you don’t know all that much about him. Mercer was a top lyricist of the Great American Songbook era, but his creative peak extended beyond that era. He won back-to-back Oscars in 1962-63 for co-writing “Moon River” and “Days of Wine and Roses.” Henry Mancini, who composed both of those hits, saluted Mercer with a memorable phrase from “Moon River” when they won for “Days of Wine and Roses,” saying “and my huckleberry friend, Johnny Mercer.”

Mercer’s other most famous songs include “Hooray for Hollywood” (a perennial on the Oscars), “One for My Baby (And One More for the Road)” (a classic saloon song that is one of Frank Sinatra’s signature hits), “Summer Wind” (another Sinatra classic from 1966), “Fools Rush In” (which Rick Nelson revived in 1963), “Dream” (one of the most melancholy ballads of the World War II years), “I’m an Old Cowhand (From the Rio Grande)” (Lucy and Ethel sang it on a 1954 episode of I Love Lucy), “That Old Black Magic” (Louis Prima & Keely Smith’s classic version was a winner at the first Grammy Awards) and “I Wanna Be Around” (Tony Bennett’s highest-charting Hot 100 hit).

Here are more Mercer songs you probably know: “Ac-Cent-Tchu-Ate-the-Positive,” “Autumn Leaves,” “Blues in the Night,” “Jeepers, Creepers!,” “Come Rain or Come Shine,” “I Remember You,” “Charade,” “Skylark” and “Too Marvelous for Words.”

Scan these 12 Fun Facts and learn more about the man for whom the Songwriters Hall of Fame named their top award.