Glenn T. Eskew is a professor of history at Georgia State University. He is the author of But for Birmingham: The Local and National Movements in the Civil Rights Struggle, editor of Labor in the Modern South, and coeditor of Paternalism in a Southern City.
Allows us to conceive of ‘Southern music’ as an expression of the
Southern diaspora, and thereby opens up new ways to think about
Mercer and about the broader landscape of American music.""- Gavin
James Campbell, author of Music and the Making of a New South;
""Johnny Mercer, one of Georgia’s?no, one of America’s?greatest
natural resources, is astutely celebrated by this valuable addition
to his growing bibliography.""- Stanley Booth, author of The True
Adventures of the Rolling Stones;
""This engaging biography brims with fresh insights about southern
culture and its relationship to American music. Eskew reveals
Johnny Mercer as a carrier of the South’s interracial culture to
the nation and the world. This book is the most original and
carefully documented contribution I have seen to understanding the
role of a creative southerner in the global culture. Readers will
appreciate Eskew’s re-creation of Mercer’s world that intersected
with so many seminal entertainment figures. It is altogether
successful in sketching the regional context that produced Mercer’s
music.""- Charles Reagan Wilson, Editor-in-chief of The New
Encyclopedia of Southern Culture;
""Eskew brings to life the vibrant music scene around the musician
from the 1930s to the 1960s and uncovers the collaborations,
friendships, and struggles that made Mercer a success. This
thoroughly researched and compelling biography will appeal to
scholars and students of popular American music.""- Emily Hamstra,
Library Journal;
""In this smart and meticulously researched biography, Georgia
State University historian Glenn T. Eskew ac-cent-tchu-ates another
of Mercer’s roles: architect of popular music during the late 1940s
and the ’50s, which Eskew calls the Age of the Singer.""- Dennis
Drabelle, Washington Post;
""No other songwriter appears as successfully involved in so many
facets of America's entertainment industry in the twentieth
century,' Glenn T. Eskew claims convincingly in Johnny Mercer. . .
. Although Johnny Mercer is ponderous at times, it does justice to
the giant accomplishments of the 'pixie from Dixie.""- Ken Emerson,
Wall Street Journal;
""Historians have tried to define the South, but few will leave you
humming the Great American Songbook quite like Glenn T. Eskew does
in Johnny Mercer.""- Atlanta Magazine;
""Eskew does a superb job of chronicling the rise of songwriting
icon Johnny Mercer, from his beginnings in Savannah, Georgia, to
his early career in New York to his becoming a central figure in
contributing to the Great American Songbook. . . . Accessible and
very well researched, as one would expect of work by a scholar of
Eskew's stature, this book is an invaluable resource.""- T. R.
Harrison, Choice
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