Johnny Mercer: On The Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe

Happy Birthday Johnny Mercer!

November 18, 1909

#JohnnyMercer's birthday, a great day to listen to @MarkSteynOnline's tribute to the great songwriter: https://t.co/iqssA5HdAi #toomarvelous

— Pundette (@pundette) November 18, 2015

Johnny Mercer loves trains (so many song writers do) and he wrote this song for the Harvey Girls, about those young women who worked in Harvey House restaurants in the Wild West (with the promise they would not get married for six months). Judy Garland was cast in the movie.

Rule 5 and FMJRA

And here is a bonus Mercer song for the road...

Mark Steyn's Song of the Century #84 (and by coincidence given the attrocious recent events in France) is the originally French song My Way, and at #83 he has Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein's Some Enchanted Evening. For Labor Day Mark had Kern and Hammerstein's Ol Man River (as part of a waterfront labor theme). Mark has Arlen and Mercer's Blues In The Night at #35.

Pundette has #11 Cole Porter's I Concentrate On You, at #12 Porter's You'd Be Nice To Come Home To, as her #13 Cole Porter's What Is This Thing Called Love. Pundette also has a Cole Porter favorite written by Jule Styne, Betty Comden and Adolph Green Just In Time at #16. Pundette has another great Mercer saloon song at #54.

Bob Belvedere is counting down Sinatra albums with Gordon Jenkins arranged All Alone at #4, Swing Easy at #5 and an interview with Chuck Granata. Bob had Kern and Hammerstein's The Song Is You on his song list (tied at #20). Bob had One For My Baby (and one more for the road) at his song #9.

I had Frank Sinatra and the President's Marine Corps Band doing You Make Me Feel So Young (and also had a bonus Betty Comden Adolph Green number from On The Town), I had Angie Dickinson's favorite Lean Baby, VanHeusen and Burke's Here's That Rainy Day, Sinatra Lord's Prayer/Ave Maria post, Berlin's When I Lost You, Arlen and Capote's Don't Like Goodbyes, and Gaudio and Holmes' For A While. And here is Frank in 1945 singing from Kern and Hammerstein's Show Boat (among other great songs) and Rodgers and Hammerstein's Soliloquy (Mark featured it at #41 on his list for Father's Day). Mercer did the English lyrics for the French song Autumn Leaves and here is Carmichael and Mercer's Cool, Cool, Cool of the Evening.

Don’t forget to also keep checking out
Pundette’s Sinatra 100 countdown,
Ms Evi’s Sinatra Celebration,
Dispatches from the Camp of the Saints Sinatra,
& Mark Steyn’s Sinatra Songs Of The Century.
It’s a swingin’ world.

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