Blues Theme [from Daddy Long Legs]

Series IV consists of lyrics, music and scripts. Although most of these were written by Mercer and his collaborators, others were not. Researchers should bear in mind that some material in this series was written by other authors and composers, and that the names of the writers are not always immediately apparent. Included in this series are draft, revised, annotated and printed copies of lyrics, melodies, scores and orchestra parts to both published and unpublished works. There are three subseries.

Subseries A contains lyrics and music to individual songs, mostly in manuscript form. The folders are arranged alphabetically by title or by type of song (i.e. "Moon River," "Ballads," "Waltzes") and may contain anything from a fragment written on a scrap of paper to an annotated finished version. An exception to the "title or topic" arrangement scheme is a folder of tunes by Italian composer Salve D'Esposito. Mercer was apparently working on English lyrics for these tunes; the folder is filed under "D'Esposito, Salve." Scores and instrumental parts are available for some of the titles, with or without manuscript lyrics or drafts.

Mercer had little formal music training and never mastered the technique of writing formal musical notation, so he used instead a system of his own in which he wrote the appropriate note names in sequence, accompanied at times by arrows pointing up or down to indicate the direction of the melody. A number of the songs in this series are represented by arrangements in standard notation which presumably are the work of others.

Although many of Mercer's draft lyrics are typewritten, many others are written in pencil on envelopes, paper scraps and so on. All drafts that have titles are filed under their titles; drafts bearing only titles such as "polka," "waltz tune," etc. are filed under those headings, which are listed alphabetically among the individual titles. Although a few tentative titles (which appear in brackets in the inventory) have been supplied by the archivists, many of the numbers could not be so identified. Many of the unidentified items have been filed under "Untitled lyrics, poetry and music," where they are further divided by subject or name of composer; others, whose subjects or composers are unclear, are filed under one of several "Miscellaneous" headings (i.e. "Miscellaneous lyrics and poetry," "Miscellaneous lyrics and music," "Miscellaneous music"). Both the "Untitled" and the "Miscellaneous" headings appear at the very end of the subseries, after the last identified title.

Several of the songs in Subseries A were written for specific shows. The titles of these shows are rarely provided in the song manuscripts themselves. However, the archivists have identified the titles of the shows for many of the songs in this subseries. When it is possible to identify the show for which a song was written, the title is listed in square brackets following the song title.

Subseries B consists of published and unpublished scripts, scores, lyrics and notes for shows dating from 1945 to 1971, arranged alphabetically by title. The majority of the scripts and scores contain material written by Mercer, while a few are from shows in which he appeared, such as Playhouse 90 and The Andy Williams Show.

Copies of the scripts, scores and parts for the musical Saratoga make up the bulk of the subseries. Saratoga scripts are filed first, followed by parts and scores for the individual numbers from the musical arranged alphabetically by title, and these are followed by the conductor's score and orchestra parts.

Untitled scripts are filed at the end of the subseries, followed by "Ideas for plays," a folder titled by Mercer, in which he kept sources, titles and outlines for possible future productions.

Programs, playbills and reviews relating to many of the shows documented in Series IV can be found in Series V under the headings "Programs, playbills and fliers" and "Programs, reviews, etc.".

Subseries C contains published band arrangements of a medley of Mercer songs, an individual song by Mercer ("Dream"), and the overture to Li'l Abner.