1.
Album
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Album, is a collection of audio recordings issued as a single item on CD, record, audio tape, or another medium. Albums of recorded music were developed in the early 20th century, first as books of individual 78rpm records, vinyl LPs are still issued, though in the 21st century album sales have mostly focused on compact disc and MP3 formats. The audio cassette was a format used from the late 1970s through to the 1990s alongside vinyl, an album may be recorded in a recording studio, in a concert venue, at home, in the field, or a mix of places. Recording may take a few hours to years to complete, usually in several takes with different parts recorded separately. Recordings that are done in one take without overdubbing are termed live, the majority of studio recordings contain an abundance of editing, sound effects, voice adjustments, etc. With modern recording technology, musicians can be recorded in separate rooms or at times while listening to the other parts using headphones. Album covers and liner notes are used, and sometimes additional information is provided, such as analysis of the recording, historically, the term album was applied to a collection of various items housed in a book format. In musical usage the word was used for collections of pieces of printed music from the early nineteenth century. Later, collections of related 78rpm records were bundled in book-like albums, the LP record, or 33 1⁄3 rpm microgroove vinyl record, is a gramophone record format introduced by Columbia Records in 1948. It was adopted by the industry as a standard format for the album. Apart from relatively minor refinements and the important later addition of stereophonic sound capability, the term album had been carried forward from the early nineteenth century when it had been used for collections of short pieces of music. Later, collections of related 78rpm records were bundled in book-like albums, as part of a trend of shifting sales in the music industry, some commenters have declared that the early 21st century experienced the death of the album. Sometimes shorter albums are referred to as mini-albums or EPs, Albums such as Tubular Bells, Amarok, Hergest Ridge by Mike Oldfield, and Yess Close to the Edge, include fewer than four tracks. There are no rules against artists such as Pinhead Gunpowder referring to their own releases under thirty minutes as albums. These are known as box sets, material is stored on an album in sections termed tracks, normally 11 or 12 tracks. A music track is a song or instrumental recording. The term is associated with popular music where separate tracks are known as album tracks. When vinyl records were the medium for audio recordings a track could be identified visually from the grooves
2.
Herb Alpert
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Herb Alpert is an American musician most associated with the group variously known as Herb Alpert & the Tijuana Brass, Herb Alperts Tijuana Brass, or TJB. Alpert is also an industry executive, the A of A&M Records. Alpert also has created abstract expressionist paintings and sculpture over two decades, which are displayed on occasion. Alpert and wife, Lani Hall, are substantial philanthropists through the operation of the Herb Alpert Foundation, Alperts musical accomplishments include five No.1 albums and 28 albums total on the Billboard Album chart, nine Grammy Awards, fourteen platinum albums, and fifteen gold albums. Alpert has sold 72 million records worldwide, Alpert is the only recording artist to hit No.1 on the U. S. Billboard Hot 100 pop chart as both a vocalist, and an instrumentalist. Herb Alpert was born and raised in the Boyle Heights section of Eastside Los Angeles, California and his family was Jewish, and had come to the U. S. from Radomyshl and Romania. His father, although a tailor by trade, was also a mandolin player. His mother taught violin at a young age and his older brother David was a talented young drummer. Alpert himself began trumpet lessons at the age of eight and played at dances as a teenager, acquiring an early wire recorder in high school, he experimented on this crude equipment. After graduating from Fairfax High School in 1952, he joined the United States Army, after his service in the Army, Alpert tried his hand at acting, but eventually settled on pursuing a career in music. While attending the University of Southern California in the 1950s, he was a member of the USC Trojan Marching Band for two years, in 1956, he appeared in the uncredited role Drummer on Mt. Sinai in the film The Ten Commandments. In 1962, he had a part in a scene in the film Mr. Hobbs Takes a Vacation where he played in a dance band. In 1957 Alpert teamed up with Rob Weerts, another burgeoning lyricist, a number of songs written or co-written by Alpert during the following two years became Top 20 hits, including Baby Talk by Jan and Dean and Wonderful World by Sam Cooke. In 1960, Alpert began his career as a vocalist at Dot Records under the name of Dore Alpert. Tell It to the Birds was recorded as the first release on the Alpert & Moss label Carnival Records, when Alpert and Moss found that there was prior usage of the Carnival name, they renamed the label A&M Records. Alpert set up a recording studio in his garage and had been overdubbing a tune called Twinkle Star, written by Sol Lake. During a visit to Tijuana, Mexico, Alpert happened to hear a band while attending a bullfight. Alpert adapted the style to the tune, mixed in crowd cheers and other noises for ambience
3.
Jazz
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Jazz is a music genre that originated amongst African Americans in New Orleans, United States, in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, and developed from roots in Blues and Ragtime. Since the 1920s jazz age, jazz has become recognized as a form of musical expression. Jazz is characterized by swing and blue notes, call and response vocals, polyrhythms, Jazz has roots in West African cultural and musical expression, and in African-American music traditions including blues and ragtime, as well as European military band music. Although the foundation of jazz is deeply rooted within the Black experience of the United States, different cultures have contributed their own experience, intellectuals around the world have hailed jazz as one of Americas original art forms. As jazz spread around the world, it drew on different national, regional, and local musical cultures, New Orleans jazz began in the early 1910s, combining earlier brass-band marches, French quadrilles, biguine, ragtime and blues with collective polyphonic improvisation. In the 1930s, heavily arranged dance-oriented swing big bands, Kansas City jazz, bebop emerged in the 1940s, shifting jazz from danceable popular music toward a more challenging musicians music which was played at faster tempos and used more chord-based improvisation. Cool jazz developed in the end of the 1940s, introducing calmer, smoother sounds and long, modal jazz developed in the late 1950s, using the mode, or musical scale, as the basis of musical structure and improvisation. Jazz-rock fusion appeared in the late 1960s and early 1970s, combining jazz improvisation with rock rhythms, electric instruments. In the early 1980s, a form of jazz fusion called smooth jazz became successful. Other styles and genres abound in the 2000s, such as Latin, the question of the origin of the word jazz has resulted in considerable research, and its history is well documented. It is believed to be related to jasm, a term dating back to 1860 meaning pep. The use of the word in a context was documented as early as 1915 in the Chicago Daily Tribune. Its first documented use in a context in New Orleans was in a November 14,1916 Times-Picayune article about jas bands. In an interview with NPR, musician Eubie Blake offered his recollections of the slang connotations of the term, saying, When Broadway picked it up. That was dirty, and if you knew what it was, the American Dialect Society named it the Word of the Twentieth Century. Jazz has proved to be difficult to define, since it encompasses such a wide range of music spanning a period of over 100 years. Attempts have been made to define jazz from the perspective of other musical traditions, in the opinion of Robert Christgau, most of us would say that inventing meaning while letting loose is the essence and promise of jazz. As Duke Ellington, one of jazzs most famous figures, said, although jazz is considered highly difficult to define, at least in part because it contains so many varied subgenres, improvisation is consistently regarded as being one of its key elements
4.
Toots Thielemans
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Jean-Baptiste Frédéric Isidor, Baron Thielemans, known professionally as Toots Thielemans, was a Belgian and American jazz musician. He was known for his playing, as well as his guitar, whistling skills. According to jazz historian Ted Gioia, his most important contribution was in championing the humble harmonica and he eventually became the preeminent jazz harmonica player. His first professional performances were with Benny Goodmans band when they toured Europe in 1949 and 1950 and he emigrated to the U. S. in 1951, becoming a citizen in 1957. From 1953 to 1959 he played with George Shearing, and then led his own groups on tours in the U. S. in 1961 he recorded and performed live one of his own compositions, Bluesette, which featured him playing guitar and whistling. Among the film soundtracks that Thielemans recorded are The Pawnbroker, Midnight Cowboy, Cinderella Liberty, The Sugarland Express and his harmonica theme song for the popular Sesame Street TV show was heard for 40 years. He often performed and recorded with Quincy Jones, who called him one of the greatest musicians of our time. In 2009 he was designated a Jazz Master by The National Endowment for the Arts, Thielemans was born in Brussels, Belgium, on 29 April 1922. He began playing music at an age, using a homemade accordion at age three. During the German occupation of Belgium beginning in 1940, he attracted to jazz, but was then playing on full-size accordion or a harmonica. After being introduced to the music of Belgian-born jazz guitarist, Django Reinhardt, he inspired to teach himself guitar. At the time he was a student majoring in math. By the wars end in 1945, he considered himself a full-time musician and he said in 1950, Django is still one of my main influences, I think, for lyricism. He can make me cry when I hear him, during an interview in 1988, he recalled, I guess I was born at the right time to live and adapt and be touched by the evolution in the jazz language. In 1949 he joined a jam session in Paris with Sidney Bechet, Charlie Parker, Miles Davis, Max Roach and he first heard the faster bebop style of jazz from records by Parker and Dizzy Gillespie after they had reached Belgium after the war. As his small collection of records grew, the music of Benny Goodman. During a visit to the U. S. in 1948, during the tour, Goodman was shocked when he learned that these tours were the first time Thielemans had earned money from his playing. Although Thielemans was hired on as a guitarist, when Goodmans group debuted at the London Palladium, during those years, he also made his first record with fellow band member, tenor saxophonist Zoot Sims
5.
The Wrecking Crew (music)
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The Wrecking Crew was a loose-knit circle of Los Angeles top studio session musicians whose services were constantly in demand during their heyday in the 1960s and early 1970s. Usually playing collectively in varying configurations, often anonymously, they backed dozens of acts on numerous top-selling hits of the era. They are now considered one of the most successful session recording units in music history. The Wrecking Crews contributions on so many hit recordings of the era went largely unnoticed until the publication of Blaines memoir, keyboardist Leon Russell and guitarist Glen Campbell later became popular solo acts, while Blaine is reputed to have played on over 140 top ten hits. In 2008, they were the subject of the documentary The Wrecking Crew, the name Wrecking Crew was popularized by drummer and member Hal Blaine in his 1990 memoir, Hal Blaine and the Wrecking Crew. According to biographer Kent Hartman, Some of the studio musicians I interviewed swear they heard it applied to themselves as early as 1963, one says it was never used at all. Blaines memoirs, and the attention that followed, cast new light on the Wrecking Crews role in many famous recordings, guitarist and bassist Carol Kaye has disputed Blaines account of the name and stated, We were never known as that. Sometimes we were called the Clique, but a Hal Blaine invented name for his own self-promotion in 1990, regarding the matter, Songfacts stated, We couldnt find any references to The Wrecking Crew in any publications from the era. In response to Kayes contention that Blaine invented the moniker to sell his book, Blaine denied that anyone had heard the name The Clique. At the time, multi-tracking equipment, though common, was less elaborate, musicians had to be available on call when producers needed a part to fill a last-minute time slot. Songs had to be recorded quickly in the fewest possible takes, the Wrecking Crew were the go to session musicians in Los Angeles during this era. The Wrecking Crews members were musically versatile but typically had formal backgrounds in jazz or classical music, the origins of the Wrecking Crew can be traced to the late 1950s with a group headed by bassist and guitarist Ray Pohlman, sometimes referred to as the First Call Gang. Earl Palmer was originally from New Orleans and had recorded on many of the Crescent City rhythm and blues classics, such as with Fats Domino, often recorded at Cosimo Matassas J&M Studio. Along with Pohlman and Palmer, some of the members of the unit in the late 1950s were Barney Kessel, Mel Pollen, Bill Aken. Their home base at the time was Hollywoods General Service Studio, in 1962, Spector started a new label, Philles Records, and set about recording the song Hes a Rebel, which would be credited to the Crystals. He enlisted the aid of his friend, saxophonist Steve Douglas. Douglas helped him corral the backing unit, which included Pohlman, guitarists Howard Roberts, Bill Aken, and Tommy Tedesco, pianist Al De Lory, upright bassist Jimmy Bond, and Hal Blaine on drums. They booked Studio A at Gold Star Studios, known for its deeply reverberant echo chambers, Spectors records backed by the Wrecking Crew usually featured arrangements by Jack Nitzsche
6.
Leon Russell
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Leon Russell was an American musician and songwriter who was involved with numerous bestselling pop music records over the course of his 60-year career. His genres included pop, rock, blues, country, bluegrass, standards, gospel and he was awarded six gold records. His collaborations rank as some of the most successful in music history and he recorded 33 albums and at least 430 songs. He wrote Delta Lady, recorded by Joe Cocker, and organized and performed with Cockers Mad Dogs and his A Song for You has been recorded by more than 200 artists, and his This Masquerade by more than 75. As a pianist, he played in his years on albums by the Beach Boys. On his first album, Leon Russell, in 1970, the musicians included Eric Clapton, Ringo Starr, One of his biggest early fans, Elton John said Russell was a mentor and inspiration. They recorded their album The Union in 2010, which earned them a Grammy nomination, Russell produced and played in recording sessions for Bob Dylan, Frank Sinatra, Ike & Tina Turner, the Rolling Stones, and others. He wrote and recorded the hits Tight Rope and Lady Blue and he performed at the Concert for Bangladesh in 1971 along with Dylan and Eric Clapton. In 2011, he was inducted into both the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and the Songwriters Hall of Fame, Russell was born in Lawton, Oklahoma. He began playing the piano at the age of four and he attended Will Rogers High School in Tulsa, Oklahoma. Also at Will Rogers High School were Anita Bryant, who was two years older, and in the same 1959 class, David Gates, Russell and Gates played and recorded together as the Fencemen. Another student at Will Rogers at the time was Elvin Bishop, during this time Russell was already performing at Tulsa nightclubs. He took the name Leon from a friend who lent him a fake ID to get into clubs he was too young to perform in. After moving to Los Angeles in 1958, Russell became a session musician, by the late 1960s, he had diversified, becoming successful as an arranger and songwriter. By 1970, he had become a recording artist. After performing country music under the name Hank Wilson in the 1970s and 1980s, Russell re-emerged in 2010 when Elton John called on him to record the album that became The Union. The album, which included contributions from Brian Wilson and Neil Young, brought renewed popularity to Russell, Russell was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame on March 14,2011. He was inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame in June 2011, according to his wife, Jan Bridges, Russell died quietly in his sleep at his suburban Nashville home on the morning of November 13,2016, at the age of 74
7.
Record producer
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A record producer or music producer oversees and manages the sound recording and production of a band or performers music, which may range from recording one song to recording a lengthy concept album. A producer has many roles during the recording process, the roles of a producer vary. The producer may perform these roles himself, or help select the engineer, the producer may also pay session musicians and engineers and ensure that the entire project is completed within the record companies budget. A record producer or music producer has a broad role in overseeing and managing the recording. Producers also often take on an entrepreneurial role, with responsibility for the budget, schedules, contracts. In the 2010s, the industry has two kinds of producers with different roles, executive producer and music producer. Executive producers oversee project finances while music producers oversee the process of recording songs or albums. In most cases the producer is also a competent arranger, composer. The producer will also liaise with the engineer who concentrates on the technical aspects of recording. Noted producer Phil Ek described his role as the person who creatively guides or directs the process of making a record, indeed, in Bollywood music, the designation actually is music director. The music producers job is to create, shape, and mold a piece of music, at the beginning of record industry, producer role was technically limited to record, in one shot, artists performing live. The role of producers changed progressively over the 1950s and 1960s due to technological developments, the development of multitrack recording caused a major change in the recording process. Before multitracking, all the elements of a song had to be performed simultaneously, all of these singers and musicians had to be assembled in a large studio and the performance had to be recorded. As well, for a song that used 20 instruments, it was no longer necessary to get all the players in the studio at the same time. Examples include the rock sound effects of the 1960s, e. g. playing back the sound of recorded instruments backwards or clanging the tape to produce unique sound effects. These new instruments were electric or electronic, and thus they used instrument amplifiers, new technologies like multitracking changed the goal of recording, A producer could blend together multiple takes and edit together different sections to create the desired sound. For example, in jazz fusion Bandleader-composer Miles Davis album Bitches Brew, producers like Phil Spector and George Martin were soon creating recordings that were, in practical terms, almost impossible to realise in live performance. Producers became creative figures in the studio, other examples of such engineers includes Joe Meek, Teo Macero, Brian Wilson, and Biddu
8.
Victor Schertzinger
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Victor L. Schertzinger was an American composer, film director, film producer, and screenwriter. His films include Paramount on Parade, Something to Sing About with James Cagney, and his two best-known songs are I Remember You and Tangerine, both with lyrics by Johnny Mercer and both featured in Schertzingers final film The Fleets In. Schertzinger was born in Mahanoy City, Pennsylvania, the child of parents of Pennsylvania Dutch descent. As a child of eight, he appeared as a violinist with several orchestras, including the Victor Herbert Orchestra, in his teens, he attended the Brown Preparatory School in Philadelphia, and gave violin performances while touring America and Europe. Schertzinger studied music at the University of Brussels and he continued to distinguish himself as a concert violinist, and then as a symphony conductor. He also worked as a songwriter, adding three songs lyrics by producer Oliver Morosco to L. Frank Baum and Louis F. Gottschalks musical. His first brush with the industry came in 1916, when Thomas Ince commissioned him to compose the orchestral accompaniment for his great silent film Civilization. After the introduction of sound, Schertzinger continued to direct films but also began to compose songs for them, though closely associated with Paramount Pictures, Schertzinger actually spent the thirties as a freelancer. Some of his best films, such as One Night of Love, at some point, Schertzinger married Julia E. Nicklin, to whom he remained married until his death. They had two daughters, Patricia and Paula, in the early 1920s, Schertzinger died unexpectedly from a heart attack in Hollywood at the age of 53, having just finished work on The Fleets In. He had directed 89 films, and had composed music for more than 50 films and he was buried in Forest Lawns Glendale location. The Hollywood Walk of Fame contains a star for Schertzinger at 1611 Vine Street, the marker reads, Violin prodigy who performed with John Philip Sousa and later became a film director and composer. He pioneered the use of film music for films, and his film One Night of Love won best musical score. He composed the pop standard Tangerine, among many films he directed were two of the Hope and Crosby Road movies. He was awarded a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, Schertzingers two best-known songs, I Remember You and Tangerine, continue to appear in the soundtracks of new films. The following information comes from the Internet Movie Database, all listed films were directed by Schertzinger, unless otherwise noted. Unless otherwise noted, the information comes from the Internet Movie Database. Publicity photo of Victor Schertzinger, circa 1930 Victor Schertzinger at the Internet Movie Database
9.
Allen Toussaint
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He was a producer for hundreds of recordings, among the best known of which are Right Place, Wrong Time, by his longtime friend Dr. John, and Lady Marmalade, by Labelle. His father, Clarence, worked on the railway and played trumpet, Allen Toussaint learned piano as a child and took informal music lessons from an elderly neighbor, Ernest Pinn. In his teens he played in a band, the Flamingos, with the guitarist Snooks Eaglin, a significant early influence on Toussaint was the syncopated second-line piano style of Professor Longhair. His first recording was in 1957 as a stand-in for Fats Domino on Dominos record I Want You to Know and his first success as a producer also came in 1957 with Lee Allens Walking with Mr. Lee. He began performing regularly in Bartholomews band, and he recorded with Fats Domino, Smiley Lewis, Lee Allen, after being spotted as a sideman by the A&R man Danny Kessler, he initially recorded for RCA Records as Al Tousan. The recordings included Toussaint and Tylers composition Java, which first charted for Floyd Cramer in 1962, Toussaint also recorded and co-wrote songs with Allen Orange in the early 1960s. In 1960, Joe Banashak, of Minit Records and later Instant Records, hired Toussaint as an A&R man and he also did freelance work for other labels, such as Fury. The early to mid-1960s are regarded as Toussaints most creatively successful period, notable examples of his work are Jessie Hills Ooh Poo Pah Doo, Ernie K-Does Mother-in-Law, and Chris Kenners I Like It Like That. A two-sided 1962 hit by Benny Spellman comprised Lipstick Traces and the simple, reddings version of the song was also recorded by the Rolling Stones on their second album. In 1964, A Certain Girl was the B-side of the first single release by the Yardbirds, the song was released again in 1980 by Warren Zevon and in 2007 by Mary Weiss, the former lead singer of the Shangri-Las. Toussaint credited about twenty songs to his parents, Clarence and Naomi and these include Fortune Teller, first recorded by Benny Spellman in 1961, and Work, Work, Work, recorded by the Artwoods in 1966. Alison Krauss and Robert Plant covered Fortune Teller on their 2007 album Raising Sand, Toussaint was drafted into the US Army in 1963 but continued to record when on leave. Dorsey had hits with several of Toussaints songs, including Ride Your Pony, Working in the Coal Mine and they later became known as the Meters. Their backing can be heard in such as Dorseys Ride Your Pony and Working in the Coal Mine, sometimes augmented by horns. Toussaint continued to produce the Meters when they began releasing records under their own name in 1969, one of his compositions, Here Come the Girls, recorded by Ernie K-Doe in 1970, formed the basis of the Sugababes 2008 hit Girls. He arranged horn music for the Bands albums Cahoots and Rock of Ages, boz Scaggs recorded Toussaints What Do You Want the Girl to Do. on his 1976 album Silk Degrees, which reached number 2 on the U. S. pop albums chart. The song was recorded by Bonnie Raitt for her 1975 album Home Plate and by Geoff Muldaur, Lowell George, Vince Gill. In 1976 he also collaborated with John Mayall on the album Notice to Appear, in 1973 Toussaint and Sehorn created the Sea-Saint recording studio in the Gentilly section of eastern New Orleans
10.
Soul Asylum
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Soul Asylum is an American alternative rock band formed in 1981 in Minneapolis, Minnesota. The band began using their name in 1983. The band originally formed in 1981 under the name Loud Fast Rules, with a lineup consisting of Dave Pirner, Dan Murphy, Karl Mueller, Morley was replaced by Grant Young in 1984. The band recorded three albums with Twin/Tone Records and two with A&M Records, with commercial success. In 1992, they released the triple-platinum album Grave Dancers Union, the band played at the inauguration of President Bill Clinton early the next year. They also scored a record with the album Let Your Dim Light Shine three years later. In 1998 they recorded Candy from a Stranger, Mueller was diagnosed with cancer in 2004, and the band organized a benefit concert on his behalf. In 2006 the band released The Silver Lining and their most recent effort is Change of Fortune, released on March 18,2016. The group was an outgrowth of a band, Loud Fast Rules, formed in 1981 by drummer Dave Pirner, guitarist and backing vocalist Dan Murphy. Pirner was moved to lead vocalist, and Pat Morley took his place, as Loud Fast Rules, two of their songs were released on the 1982 Reflex Records cassette compilation Barefoot and Pregnant. On the following Reflex compilation, Kitten, they were billed as Proud Crass Fools, Soul Asylum began performing around the Minneapolis–St. Paul area and quickly developed a following while becoming known for their powerful. Their 1984 debut album, Say What You Will, everything Can Happen was originally released on LP and cassette by local record label Twin/Tone as a nine-song EP. It is out of print but was re-released on CD as Say What You Will, Clarence. Karl Sold the Truck, between the release of Say What You Will and their second album, Grant Young joined the group, taking over the drums from Morley. In 1986, Soul Asylum released three albums, Made to Be Broken, Times Incinerator and While You Were Out, one early review described their sound as some unholy mix of Kiss and Hank Williams thrown under the wheels of a runaway train. All elements contributed to the bands being described as a grunge precursor, despite critical acclaim locally and internationally, they remained unknown to a larger U. S. audience and radio market. The group signed with A&M Records in 1988 and their first offering on that label was Clam Dip & Other Delights, the title and cover art being a parody of Whipped Cream & Other Delights, by A&M Records co-founder Herb Alpert. Hang Time was released in 1988, followed by And the Horse They Rode In On in 1990, because of poor sales and Pirners hearing problems, the group considered disbanding
11.
Johnny Mercer
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John Herndon Johnny Mercer was an American lyricist, songwriter and singer. He was also the founder of Capitol Records and he is best known as a lyricist, but he also composed music. He was also a singer who recorded his own songs as well as those written by others. From the mid-1930s through the mid-1950s, many of the songs Mercer wrote and he wrote the lyrics to more than fifteen hundred songs, including compositions for movies and Broadway shows. He received nineteen Academy Award nominations, and won four Best Original Song Oscars, Mercer was born in Savannah, Georgia. Lillians father was a merchant seaman who ran the Union blockade during the U. S. Civil War, Mercer was Georges fourth son, first by Lillian. Mercer was also a distant cousin of General George S. Patton, neither the General, nor Mercer himself, ever lived there. His mothers father was born in Lastovo, Croatia in 1834 to mother Ivana Cucevic, Mercer liked music as a small child and attributed his musical talent to his mother, who would sing sentimental ballads. Mercers father also sang, mostly old Scottish songs and his aunt told him he was humming music when he was six months old and later she took him to see minstrel and vaudeville shows where he heard “coon songs” and ragtime. The family’s summer home “Vernon View” was on the waters and Mercer’s long summers there among mossy trees, saltwater marshes. Mercer’s exposure to music was perhaps unique among the white songwriters of his generation. As a child, Mercer had African-American playmates and servants, and he listened to the fishermen and vendors about him and he was also attracted to black church services. Mercer later stated, “Songs always fascinated me more than anything and he had no formal musical training but was singing in a choir by six and at 11 or 12 he had memorized almost all of the songs he had heard and became curious about who wrote them. He once asked his brother who the best songwriter was, and his brother said Irving Berlin, despite Mercers early exposure to music, his talent was clearly in creating the words and singing, not in playing music, though early on he had hoped to become a composer. In addition to the lyrics that Mercer memorized, he was an avid reader and his attempts to play the trumpet and piano were not successful, and he never could read musical scores with any facility, relying instead on his own notation system. As a teenager in the Jazz Era, he was a product of his age and he hunted for records in the black section of Savannah and played such early black jazz greats as Ma Rainey, Bessie Smith, and Louis Armstrong. His father owned the first car in town, and Mercer’s teenage social life was enhanced by his driving privilege, later, Mercer wrote a humorous song called Arthur Murray Taught Me Dancing in a Hurry. Mercer attended exclusive Woodberry Forest boys prep school in Virginia until 1927, though not a top student, he was active in literary and poetry societies and as a humor writer for the school’s publications
