Happy Birthday Johnny Mercer, Happy Anniversary Rogers & Hammerstein

Powerline celebrates the 100th birthday of Johnny Mercer, with an appreciation of his place in the Great American Songbook, with lots of links and a video of Midnight Sun,

"It's as if the lyric itself is a midnight sun, a last blaze of an Alley style extinguishing itself..."

Mark Steyn is telling stories about Mercer in his music column all month.

We’re after the same rainbow’s end
Waiting round the bend
My huckleberry friend
Moon River and me…

Where is Moon River? Everywhere and nowhere. But, if you had to pin it down, you’d find it meandering at least metaphorically somewhere in the neighborhood of Savannah, Georgia. At one point, the town’s most celebrated musical emissary was Hard-Hearted Hannah, the Vamp of Savannah. But then the American Songbook’s huckleberry friend showed up: John Herndon Mercer, born in Savannah one hundred years ago, November 18th 1909. The family home, the Mercer House, is the setting for the most famous book written about Savannah, Midnight In The Garden Of Good And Evil. . .

He's writing about songs like Goody, Goody and Blues in the Night and Hooray for Hollywood. More on Midnight Sun and later songs. Mercer didn't exactly get stuck in a rut as far as musical styles go.

But it was also the 50 anniversary of The Sound of Music hitting broadway a couple of days ago.

Good stuff. Great American Songbook, indeed.