Mercer's Autumn

The song we know as "Autumn Leaves" was originally "Les feuilles mortes."  Its familiar English lyrics ("...those sunburned hands I loved to hold") were written by Johnny Mercer; written, it's said, while Mercer was in a cab on his way to the Los Angeles airport.

Johnny Mercer knew a lot about autumn, as shown in many lyrics, including "Early Autumn" ("there's a dance pavilion in the rain, all shuttered down" to "The Summer Wind" ("...softer than a piper man, one day it called to you") and there is a sense of loss in these songs. 

But Mercer was much more than that.  Dubbed "The Colonel" by Harold Arlen, because of his Savannah, Georgia accent, he wrote an extraordinary number of lyrics, from the elegant "Skylark" and haunting "Laura" to the rowdy "G.I. Jive" and "Jubilation T. Cornpone;"from the silken "Emily" and "Dearly Beloved" to the barroom classics "Blues in the Night" and "One For My Baby."

He composed some of the songs ("Dream, "Something's Gotta Give") and he sang, charmingly and quirkily.  Hard to find many of his recordings now (including "Two of a Kind," a romp with Bobby Darin) but one treasure on CD is "An Evening with Johnny Mercer," a live performance in which he runs through dozens of his songs, including "The Girlfriend of the Whirling Dervish" and "Poor Miriam, Neglected Using Irium" (his one singing commercial, for Bob Hope's radio show).   

One of his last lyrics was "When October Goes."  When Mercer went, he left it behind, and Barry Manilow set it to music.  It's an aging man's song.  There are recordings by Rosemary Clooney and Nancy Wilson.

"And when October goes,

 the same old dream appears,

 and you are in my arms,

    to share the happy years.

"I hate to see October go."