The Complete Lyrics of Johnny Mercer

 
“This is the seventh volume in one of the most worthwhile scholarly enterprises of our time, the effort to collect all the lyrics of the great pop songwriters of the 20th century. . . . The scholarship is impressive . . . a labor of love . . . Amazingly prolific . . . Mercer tended to think of each lyric as complete in itself, a little poem . . . He seemed comfortable across the entirety of America, and said as much in song: ‘Any place I hang my hat is home.’ But he always kept up his connection to the South, which provided him with the inspiration for much of his best work. . . . The other great lyricists had many ear-bending adjectives in their quivers. But none of them ever came up with a more perfect word for a song than Johnny Mercer did when his Southern unconscious gave him the gift of ‘huckleberry.’”
            —Barry Gewen, The New York Times Book Review
 
“[Mercer] could be considered the best lyricist of the last five-score years. . . . one of the most evocative writers about the American South who’s ever put pen to paper. . . . Enjoying a book such as this is akin to turning on an internal iPod. . . . Mercer wrote ‘That Old Black Magic’ and infused it—and everything else he copiously imagined—with that old knack magic.”
            —David Finkle, The Huffington Post