Event preview: Johnny Mercer Celebration
8 p.m. Feb. 28, $39.72-$65.64. Rialto Center for the Arts, 80 Forsyth St. N.W., Atlanta.
404-413-9TIX (9849). info@rialtocenter.org.
Atlanta jazz trumpeter and singer Joe Gransden will premiere two never-heard Johnny Mercer songs as he and singer Carmen Bradford headline the Rialto Center for the Arts' annual tribute to the Georgia songwriter.
The songs were discovered in the Mercer Collection at Georgia State University.
“They found a bunch of Johnny Mercer songs and a cassette tape of Johnny singing and working at the piano,” Gransden said.
“I chose my favorites and I’m going to premiere them at the show,” he said.
The Johnny Mercer Celebration began in 1991, and this year’s show will include the GSU Jazz Band and Atlanta-based singer Bradford, a featured vocalist for nine years with the Count Basie Orchestra. Bradford has sung and recorded with such varied artists as Frank Sinatra and James Brown.
Gransden’s and Bradford’s lives have intertwined with Mercer (1909-1976), one of America’s great popular lyricists, in ways that make them perfect for this show.
Gransden, who was solely a trumpeter early in his career, said he developed his voice singing the Mercer song “I’m Old Fashioned.”
“I started to investigate all his songs and studied them, and I really enjoyed what he was saying and how he constructed songs,” Grandsen said. “The stories he tells in his songs are timeless. In 1,000 years, people will still be singing Johnny Mercer songs.”
Bradford and Mercer are connected via Louis Armstrong.
As a young man in Savannah, Mercer loved the music of early jazz greats such as Armstrong and later met his idol. Mercer wrote or helped write songs that Armstrong recorded or performed, such as “Lazy Bones” and “Jeepers Creepers.” On her website, Bradford, who comes from a musical family, features a picture of herself, at age 4, sitting on Armstrong’s lap. Mercer also nurtured the young Sinatra, whom Bradford sang with.
Bradford said among other songs, she will sing Mercer’s “Skylark,” which has become a big band classic.
“I have a beautiful arrangement of that song,” she said.
Mercer wrote more than 1,400 songs, which were performed in more than 100 movies and 23 stage productions. Four of his songs won Academy Awards for Best Song, and 14 others were nominated. He also co-founded Capitol Records.
His wife, Ginger, donated Mercer’s items to GSU.
Get a taste of the featured performers' music at www.joegransden.com and www.carmenbradford.com.
