Eskew brings to life the vibrant music scene around the musician from the 1930s to the 1960s and uncovers the collaborations, friendships, and struggles that made Mercer a success. This thoroughly researched and compelling biography will appeal to scholars and students of popular American music.
Emily Hamstra Library Journal Eskew does a superb job of chronicling the rise of songwriting icon Johnny Mercer, from his beginnings in Savannah, Georgia, to his early career in New York ti his becoming a central figure in contributing to the Great American Songbook. . . . Accessible and very well researched, as one would expect of work by a scholar of Eskew's stature, this book is an invaluable resource.
T. R. Harrison Choice In this smart and meticulously researched biography, Georgia State University historian Glenn T. Eskew ac-cent-tchu-ates another of Mercer's roles: architect of popular music during the late 1940s and the '50s, which Eskew calls the Age of the Singer.
Dennis Drabelle Washington Post Historians have tried to define the South, but few will leave you humming the Great American Songbook quite like Glenn T. Eskew does in Johnny Mercer.
Atlanta Magazine No other songwriter appears as successfully involved in so many facets of America's entertainment industry in the twentieth century, ' Glenn T. Eskew claims convincingly in Johnny Mercer. . . . Although Johnny Mercer is ponderous at times, it does justice to the giant accomplishments of the 'pixie from Dixie.
Ken Emerson Wall Street Journal This engaging biography brims with fresh insights about southern culture and its relationship to American music. Eskew reveals Johnny Mercer as a carrier of the South's interracial culture to the nation and the world. This book is the most original and carefully documented contribution I have seen to understanding the role of a creative southerner in the global culture. Readers will appreciate Eskew's re-creation of Mercer's world that intersected with so many seminal entertainment figures. It is altogether successful in sketching the regional context that produced Mercer's music.
Charles Reagan Wilson Editor-in-chief of The New Encyclopedia of Southern Culture Johnny Mercer, one of Georgia's
no, one of America's
greatest natural resources, is astutely celebrated by this valuable addition to his growing bibliography.
Stanley Booth author of The True Adventures of the Rolling Stones Allows us to conceive of 'Southern music' as an expression of the Southern diaspora, and thereby opens up new ways to think about Mercer and about the broader landscape of American music.
Gavin James Campbell author of Music and the Making of a New South