Correspondence, January-October 10, 1975

Series II consists of personal and business correspondence, including letters, telegrams, greeting cards, Mercer family Christmas cards, and notes, dating from 1930 to 1981, predominantly for the years 1940 to 1976. The correspondence is mainly incoming and includes many telegrams to Ginger Mercer from the 1930s; letters from collaborators, especially Andre Previn, Johnny Green, Harold Arlen and Harry Warren; and business letters, the bulk of which are from ASCAP, Chappell Co. and Robbins Music Corp. Among the celebrities represented are Irving Berlin and Bing Crosby and public notables such as J. Edgar Hoover, Jimmy Carter and Patricia Nixon. The files from 1975 on, during the months of Mercer's last illness, contain many get-well messages; correspondence after his death on June 25, 1976 includes condolence messages, mass cards, and notices of charitable contributions made on Mercer's behalf, from local, national and international friends and business associates. Of particular interest are the examples of Christmas cards sent by Johnny and Ginger Mercer, bearing verses composed by Mercer that often mention friends and business associates by name. Some of the Christmas cards are available for the years 1938 to 1975.

Additional business correspondence can be found in Series III. Some of the correspondence in Series III overlaps that in Series II, primarily the folders of legal documents concerning copyright of the song "Laura." Series III also contains one folder of correspondence between Mercer and Paul Whiteman; the folder is filed under "Whiteman, Paul...".

The correspondence in Series II is arranged chronologically from 1930 to 1981, except for undated items, which have been placed after the last chronological folder, and the copies of the Mercer Christmas cards, which have been maintained as a group and filed after the "Undated" folder. Following the Contents List is a name and date index to this series.