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Johnny Mercer has been very
special for me ever since I first realized that all my favourite lyrics were in
fact written by one and the same person, namely him.....
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I have not been to Savannah
yet, but in my imagination it already exists as a dreamland, where a blossom
covered lane leads toward a meadowland on the banks of the Moon River ... ....
All the immediately
evocative countryside images that Mercer conveys in his lyrics are romantic
in the original sense of the word. As a Berlin native, I consider them on a par
with the poetry written by the great German romantics, where landscapes
and emotions reflect and influence each other. ....
"Autumn Leaves"
is to my mind on the same level of greatness as Rilke's famous
"Herbstlied" ("Autumn Song"), and the love, lust and
longing tumbling in a spin in "That Old Black Magic" are as
compelling as in Goethe's masterpiece "Gretchen am
Spinnrad" ("Margaret at the Spinning Wheel").....
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A Johnny Mercer lyric
always comes across as something authentically by him, a part of his real
person, as lived and experienced by him - and us ! He always strikes the right
balance between nostalgia and optimism, between tenderness and passion; genuine
emotions that we all can relate to and that accompany us through life.....
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And beyond that, a wonderful
singer himself, he is a singer's lyricist. His ambition was to write “a song that everybody loves and
all the artists can’t wait to sing and record it”. That never failed. Every vowel is in its
perfect spot, the intricate, often interior rhymes fall into place naturally
and the lyric hugs the music in a way that makes every tune a shere joy to
sing.....
....
I have been working on my
tribute for several years, choosing out of the hundreds of songs the two dozen
I find I truely cannot do without. They range from some of his very early
lyrics ("Goody Goody") to some of his last ones ("The Summer Wind"), from the
very famous ("Autumn Leaves", "One for My Baby", "Day
in, Day out") to maybe lesser known pieces like "Let's Take the Long
Way Home", "Dearly Beloved" or "My Shining Hour". Out
of all this wealth, for me personally the highlights of my upcoming shows will
be "Blues in the Night", "Fools Rush In" and my alltime
favourite "Skylark".....
....
To him, writing songs was “an exciting, stimulating
experience like an adventure in love”, and that’s exactly
how I feel singing those songs. It is
always a great thrill for me to make the audience aware that one great poet
wrote such a varied range of timeless words and I'm very happy to contribute a
little bit to the celebration of his centennial.....
....
Susanna Bartilla....
Myspace.com/susannabartillaquartet....
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