Submitted by Ken Barnes, Aug 19, 2007 04:08

While I was delighted to see Will Friedwald singing the praises of a new 3-CD set by singer-songwriter,Johnny Mercer, I must admit to being irritated by the many needless inaccuracies that popped up during the course of an otherwise excellent article.

He begins by saying that many of Mercer's best recordings and those of singer/songwriters like Carmichael and Arlen are hard to find in the CD era. Not true. Check out Amazon.com and you'll find a whole host of wonderful Mercer albums readily available.

Secondly, Mr. Friedwald states quite firmly that Mercer won his first Academy Award for the song from 1964's "Charade." This is nonsense. Mercer's first Academy Award came in 1946 for "On The Atchison,Topeka and the Santa Fe" ( from "The Harvey Girls") which was followed by three further Oscars for "In The Cool,Cool,Cool of the Evening" from "Here Comes The Groom" (1951) - "Moon River" from "Breakfast at Tiffany's" (1961) and "The Days of Wine and Roses" (1962). As for "Charade," it was merely a nominated song and did not win.

But the recurring inacccuracies do not end there. As co-founder of Capitol Records, Mr. Friedwald states that "Mercer gave up active management of Capitol after the 1948 recording ban and sacrificed his recording career along with it. Grossly untrue. In 1949, he had one of his biggest hit records with"Baby, it's Cold Outside" ( in duet with Margaret Whiting ) and his Capitol recording career continued sporadically until 1954. The following year, he and his partner, Glenn Wallichs and the widow of Buddy De Sylva, sold Capitol to EMI. Even that was not the end of his recording career. In 1960 he recorded a memorable duet album with Bobby Darin ( still very much available on CD ) and, still later in 1973 and '74, he recorded two solo albums in London. I can vouch for the latter because I produced them. And, later on in 1974, I managed to reunite Mercer with Bing Crosby in a duet session in Los Angeles on October 17 which was his last time in a recording studio - 26 years after Mr. Friedwald said that his recording had been sacrificed.

Almost all of these latter day recordings have been selling for years and are still available on CD. In the past, I have always admired Will Friedwald for the diligent research he displayed in his excellent book "Jazz Singing" and other publications. I don't know who is doing his research these days, but I would suggest that in future he gets his facts straight before committing them to print for the derailment of posterity.

Ken Barnes ( Musician, record producer and film historian )

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