Something's Gotta Give (Bing Crosby with Buddy Cole and His Trio)
I Had Myself A True Love (Audra McDonald with John Williams)
I Wanna Be Around (Tony Bennett and Bono)
My Shining Hour (Barbra Streisand)
Blues In The Night (Ray Charles)
Laura (Michael Feinstein)
Spring, Spring, Spring (JaLaLa)
I'm Old Fashioned (Chet Baker)
Any Place I Hang My Hat Is Home (Dr. John)
This Time The Dream's On Me (Morgan Eastwood with Larry Goldings and Kyle Eastwood)
Dream (Bill Charlap)
I Thought About You (Daryl Sherman)
Two Of A Kind (Johnny Mercer with Bobby Darin with Billy May and His Orchestra)
Skylark (Maude Maggart with Jamie Cullum)
To mark the 100th anniversary of Johnny Mercer's birth in 1909, this documentary will present the life and work of Johnny Mercer through the story telling eyes of Clint Eastwood with new performances and interviews by: TON... more »Y BENNETT, JOHN WILLIAMS, JULIE ANDREWS, DR.JOHN, MICHAEL FEINSTEIN, BLAKE EDWARDS, JAMIE CULLUM, AUDRA McDONALD, ANDRE PREVIN, MAUDE MAGGART, ALAN BERGMAN and STEPHEN HOLDEN. The album includes performances from the film plus Johnny Mercer favorites performed by Ray Charles, Frank Sinatra, Barbra Streisand, Bing Crosby, Tony Bennett & Bono, and many more.« less
To mark the 100th anniversary of Johnny Mercer's birth in 1909, this documentary will present the life and work of Johnny Mercer through the story telling eyes of Clint Eastwood with new performances and interviews by: TONY BENNETT, JOHN WILLIAMS, JULIE ANDREWS, DR.JOHN, MICHAEL FEINSTEIN, BLAKE EDWARDS, JAMIE CULLUM, AUDRA McDONALD, ANDRE PREVIN, MAUDE MAGGART, ALAN BERGMAN and STEPHEN HOLDEN. The album includes performances from the film plus Johnny Mercer favorites performed by Ray Charles, Frank Sinatra, Barbra Streisand, Bing Crosby, Tony Bennett & Bono, and many more.
"I have many of the songs here on the original albums from which they came and it's an excellent compilation.
If you have a chance to see Eastwood's documentary currently airing on TCM this month, by all means do so. It was excellent.
The song choices here are great...we're only sadly limited by space as there are so many GREAT Johnny Mercer choices available. I'd only quibble with the omission of a Mercer song by Judy Garland, who shared a special relationship with Mercer over the years and whom he quietly described as his muse. The stunning arrangement of "Come Rain or Come Shine" she does, with its final notes shattering the ceiling, is not to be missed and would have been great here, too."
There's one song in the collection
Ocarolan | 11/03/2009
(5 out of 5 stars)
"worth the price of the whole "The Dream's On Me" and that's Daryl Sherman's "I Thought About You!" On a CD full of gems, Sherman's breathy girly gutsy take on this song will melt your heart!"
Mercer on TCM
M. Loupe | so. california | 11/05/2009
(5 out of 5 stars)
"This album is from Clint Eastwood's tribute to Johnny Mercer on TCM. The show was wonderful and any fans of Johnny Mercer will love this CD."
Not bad; not great
Ocarolan | East Coast, USA | 12/05/2009
(3 out of 5 stars)
"Given the number of memorable songs that Mercer wrote, it is inevitable that a single-disk compilation will omit many. Still, I am left to wonder why some of the songs on this disk made the cut when "Satin Doll," "Too Marvelous for Words," "Day In, Day Out," "I Remember You," "One for My Bay (One More for the Road)," "Come Rain or Come Shine," "Autumn Leaves," "You Must Have Been a Beautiful Baby," "Jeepers Creepers," "Moon River," "Charade," "Days of Wine and Roses," and "Summer Wind" did not. Admittedly, there is something to be said for using a compilation like this to provide exposure to some of Mercer's lesser-known songs. In this regard, the inclusion of "Trav'lin Light" (Queen Latifah) "Midnight Sun" (Ella Fitzgerald), and "My Shining Hour" (Barbara Streisand) work well. Far less successful are "I Had Myself a True Love" (Audra McDonald) and "Spring, Spring, Spring" (Jalala). These five tracks reflect, in part, another problem with a compilation of a writer's songs, and that is the choice of artists. Mercer's songs have been recorded by so many artists that selecting the most popular versions is probably a licensing nightmare. That may account for the selection of some of the artists on this disk (for example, Maude Maggart's version of "Skylark" rather than that of k. d. lang or Linda Ronstadt). I doubt, however, that it was a licensing problem that led to the choice of 12-year-old Morgan Eastwood (Clint's daughter) for the title track. Fortunately, it appears that someone recognized that it was better to omit "One for My Baby" than to include a version other than Sinatra's."