Jazz Times Artist: Mancini, Monica
Title of CD: The Dreams of Johnny Mercer
Record Label: Concord
Reviewed by Doug Ramsey in the CD Reviews section of the March 2001 issue.

Monica Mancini's beautiful singing of "Skylark" bolsters the proposition that Johnny Mercer was a poet, the greatest of all American lyricists. She underlines the cleverness of "Ac-cent-tchu-ate the Positive," "On the Atchison, Topeka and the Santa Fe" and "The Weekend of a Private Secretary," and the ironic opportunism of "It Had Better Be Tonight." Seven other sets of lyrics discovered after Mercer died and set to music by Barry Manilow are not in the same league but, then, "Skylark" is formidable competition for any song, including all the rest of Mercer's except "Early Autumn." Still, "Something Tells Me" and "When October Goes" are superior songs. Appropriate to the concept of the album, Mancini sings like a dream even when the lyrics are not top-rung Mercer. Her expressiveness, interpretation and intonation are pleasures throughout. She and arrangers Michael Lang and Greg Field take "Atchison, Topeka" into country-blues territory. Other fine arrangements are by Patrick Williams, David Torres and Randy Waldman. Singing all of the parts but the bass notes in "Ac-cent-tchu-ate," Mancini's duplicate selves give groups like The Manhattan Transfer and Take Six a run for their money. Warren Luening has a couple of beguiling flugelhorn solos. Pianist Lang accompanies Mancini sensitively and solos beautifully on "Skylark" and "When the Meadow Was Bloomin'," making me want to hear more of them as a duo.

Barry Manilow

"This music has been waiting for a singer like Monica."

The Dreams of Johnny Mercer Album Review
Monica Mancini
The Dreams of Johnny Mercer
(Concord Jazz)

The names "Mancini" and "Mercer" are associated with more than their fair share of copyrights: Separately and together, they wrote hundreds of pages into the Great American Songbook. Finding their names side-by-side on an album, you can't help but hope for the best, even if the "Mancini" turns out to be someone different than the one you had in mind. Of course, the vocalist Monica Mancini almost had to go into music. As the daughter of the Hollywood composer Henry Mancini, she grew up surrounded by some of the smartest songs and biggest hits of the '60s and '70s. But on The Dreams Of Johnny Mercer (Concord Jazz), she tackles only one of her dad's tunes, the simmering samba "It Had Better Be Tonight." Instead, she concentrates on the other composers with whom lyricist Mercer collaborated so successfully: Harold Arlen, Hoagy Carmichael, Harry Warren, and Barry Manilow.

Actually, Mercer, who died in 1976, wrote a number of songs with Manilow, and I've heard lots worse. For all his schlock tendencies, Manilow has a deep understanding of the standards tradition, as proven by a song like this album's "When October Goes;" its cinematic sweep stands up to a song like "Once Upon a Summertime," which Mercer wrote with Michel Legrand in 1962. I won't call Manilow the equal of the other composers heard here. The fact that he wrote half these tunes knocks the album down a notch. Still, Mercer's lyrics find a friend in Mancini's clarion tone and relaxed, jazz-inspired phrasing. She doesn't scat, and she keeps her ornamentation of the melodies to a minimum, but she nails the notes and swings with the grace of those swaying palms along Rodeo Drive.