Popular music

Abstract The Johnny Mercer Foundation worked with the Turner Classic Movies network, Rhapsody Productions, executive producer Clint Eastwood and director Bruce Ricker to create Johnny Mercer: The Dream's On Me, a 100-minute documentary on the life and music of songwriter Johnny Mercer, released in 2009. The collection includes production and research materials created or assembled for the film, 1912-2013, including newly-created interviews and performances as well as...

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The Johnny Mercer "Three Arabian Knights" collection contains materials related to the never produced 1960s musical, "Three Arabian Knights." It includes draft lyrics, screenplay, script, telegrams, reel-to-reel tapes of the songs and CDs. Materials date from around 1960 to 1969.

Abstract: Leonora Gidlund conducted extensive research on resources relating to the life and career of Johnny Mercer while pursuing an M.A. degree in History at Georgia State University, resulting in a thesis in 1984. Her papers consist of correspondence with educational institutions, archives, historical societies, book dealers, radio stations and private collectors holding research materials relating to Johnny Mercer, and include a number of copies of original materials (including draft lyrics and...

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Lou Busch (1910-1979) was a musician, composer, and record company executive who also had a successful recording career as pianist Joe "Fingers" Carr. The Lou Busch scores collection consists of orchestral and small-group arrangements of a variety of popular songs, many recorded by Busch.

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The Margaret Whiting collection consists of printed, visual, and audio materials relating to the careers of singer Margaret Whiting and her friend, songwriter Johnny Mercer, as well as Johnny Rotella and Emma Kelly.

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On September 23, 1994 Georgia State University held the "Mostly Mercer" concert and reception, featuring Margaret Whiting. The collection consists of photographs of the performers and others.

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The Music and Popular Culture Periodicals collection is an artificial collection of serial publications about the American Popular Song, Jazz, Country, Bluegrass and Gospel genres of music, and related musical industry issues. Materials are usually received by Special Collections along with donated manuscript collections.

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The Music Printed collection: Ephemera is an amalgmation of materials on a variety of topics relating to music and popular culture.

Abstract: A Savannah, Georgia businessman, Nick Mamalakis was associated with lyricist Johnny Mercer's family and its businesses from 1930, and was the primary advocate of plans to bring the papers of Johnny Mercer to the archives at Georgia State University. His papers include articles, newsclippings, correspondence and printed material relating to Johnny Mercer and to the acquisition of the Johnny Mercer Papers by Georgia State University, and brief manuscript by Nick Mamalakis describing the events...

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The Ober family lived near Johnny Mercer and his family on Lido Isle (Newport Beach, California) in the 1950s and 1960s. The two families became close friends. The collection contains correspondence, photographs, and other printed and manuscript materials, documenting the long relationship between the families, as well as collected material relating to Johnny Mercer, 1976-2000.

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The Philip Furia collection contains research materials used to create the Johnny Mercer biography, Skylark: The Life and Time of Johnny Mercer. It includes cassette tapes of interviews, transcriptions of interviews, and photographs. The majority of materials date from 2000 to 2002.

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Richard A. Whiting was a prominent music composer for Hollywood and Broadway productions from the 1920s-1930s. The Richard A. Whiting Collection, 1896-2006, contains files related to Whiting's life and career as a musical composer including correspondence, photographs, periodicals and sheet music.

Abstract: The Robert Kimball Collection, 1930-2008, consists of mixed materials compiled by the well-respected musical theater historian as research for his co-edited book The Complete Lyrics of Johnny Mercer (New York, 2009). The collection contains biographical information on Johnny Mercer's collaborators, songs (in the form of sheet music, arranger's piano and vocal scores, arranger's lead sheets, piano-conductor scores), newspaper clippings, copies of theater...

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Rose Marie (1923-2017) was a successful singer, actress, and comedienne whose career spanned more than seven decades of evolving popular entertainment, from radio to theater to film to television. The materials in this collection document the unpublished artifacts of such a career, consisting mainly of manuscript (or draft) sheet music and noncommercial audio recordings.

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Sadie Vimmerstedt, who was a resident of Youngstown, Ohio, wrote a letter to Johnny Mercer in February of 1957 suggesting that Mercer write a song entitled "When Somebody Breaks Your Heart." Mercer wrote the song, ultimately sharing authorship with her on a 50/50 basis. Mrs. Vimmerstedt's collection includes Mercer's first letter to her, a few Christmas cards from Mercer, and photographs taken at the 1963 Grammy Awards banquet.

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Steve Allen (1921-2000) was a well-known author, pianist, comedian, composer, and actor. He was an admirer of Johnny Mercer's lyrics. After Mercer's death, his widow Ginger Mercer and Bill Harbach encouraged Allen to write a song to a title Mercer had created, "Your Wife Is the Love of My Life." This collection consists of a lead sheet and typed lyrics for Allen's "Your Wife Is the Love of My Life."

Abstract: Vern Hansen (born March 17, 1918) worked as a musician and radio promotion specialist in Iowa, and moved to California in the 1960s. A songwriter and author, he corresponded with lyricist Johnny Mercer and singer Bing Crosby about his work and his efforts to succeed in the entertainment industry. His papers, 1934-1939, 1951-1984, 1990-2009, include correspondence, creative works, legal documents, and printed material. In addition to his correspondence with Mercer, much of the material...

Scope and Contents of the Collection The Wayne W. Daniel collection contains manuscript copies of the book Pickin' on Peachtree, audio cassette recordings of oral histories, photographs, posters and event flyers, commercial and non-commercial sound recordings, as well as commercial and non-commercial video recordings. The bulk of the collection is made up of Dr. Daniel's research files that he utilized to write his numerous articles and papers on country music as well as ...

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Windell M. Smith grew up in Savannah, Georgia during the 1960s. He later became a Special Education teacher in the Savannah area. This collection consists of a single sheet of lyrics that Johnny Mercer provided to Savannah Boy Scout Troop 60 for a 1960 trip to the Boy Scout Jamboree in Colorado Springs, Colorado.