Two words: “Moon River.” Even Morrissey has to bow down to Johnny Mercer’s greatness as a lyricist. The Manchurian Wonder even did a 9-minute version of “Moon River.” I kid you not!
In this beautiful production you get 1,200 lyrics. Songs co-written by fellow greats like Richard A. Whiting, Hoagy Carmichael, Jerome Kern, and Harold Arlen among others. The classics “Jeepers Creepers,” “On The Atchison, Topeka, and the Santa Fe” (the ultimate road song) and of course the classic work do More...

What an incredible book! The "complete lyrics" series is a must have for anyone with an interest in the music of (particularly) the first half of the twentieth century, Porter, Hart, Ira Gershwin, Berlin, Loesser and Hammerstein have all been covered in the last 30 years, but Mercer for me at least was obviously going to be something even more special and this massive tome doesn't disappoint. The amount of work that has gone into the book is phenomenal, I did spot a few second chorus More...