Free You Fascinate Me So: The Life and Times of Cy Coleman by Andy Propst Page A

for any of the production’s deficits.
    The show settled into a comfortable run at the Imperial, but in January its momentum was stalled by Anderson’s unexpected death from a heart attack. The production continued under the supervision of producer Harry Rigby.
    When John Murray Anderson’s Almanac concluded its Broadway run on June 25, 1954, it had played a respectable 299 performances, and though Coleman and McCarthy didn’t get the sort of reviews that make for a breakthrough debut, Almanac was a solid Broadway credit. In addition, the revue provided Coleman with his first trunk song, “The Riviera,” which had been intended for the show but never used. It was a tune that proved to be a valuable commodity as he continued his ascent as a songwriter.

7.
“I’m Gonna Laugh You Out of My Life”
    The unused tune from John Murray Anderson’s Almanac became useful to Coleman as he bolstered two aspects of his professional life that had been fallow for a few years: those of accompanist and arranger.
    The opportunity came about thanks to the long-standing relationship between Joseph A. McCarthy Jr. and the famed chanteuse Mabel Mercer, whose career had begun in her native England in the 1920s when she appeared in touring music-hall productions. She eventually made her way to the West End, appearing in Lew Leslie’s Blackbirds of 1926 . From the theater she had moved on to London’s supper clubs and eventually boîtes in Paris. There she most notably played the chic club Bricktop’s, where she became a favorite of American expatriates enjoying the heady atmosphere of the City of Light between the wars. After World War II broke out Mercer settled in New York and promptly became a fixture at Tony’s West Side, a club on West Fifty-second Street that combined the elegance of the East Side with more bohemian qualities.
    Mercer’s performance style was simplicity itself. She sat next to the piano with her hands clasped in her lap. While she sang, she rarely moved. There might be a gesture to accent a word of phrase, but that was it. It was a style that caught on with clubgoers, and by 1953 she was performing in the aptly named Show Case, a small space created especially for her above the bustling Byline Room on West Fifty-Second Street, just blocks away from Tony’s.
    Mercer’s devoted following prompted Atlantic Records to celebrate her work in a series of albums. The first installment featured Mercer delivering popular songs by established songwriters. By the time the company issued its second Mercer album in early 1953, she was performing both standards and titles by new talents. One of these was “Over the Weekend,” which had a lyric by Coleman’s writing partner McCarthy and a melody by Jerome Brooks.
    Such selections were indicative of Mercer’s passion for interesting untested material, and given that she could “make” a song by performing it, it’s little surprise that songwriters aggressively plugged their work to her. One of Mercer’s close friends, visual artist Beata Gray, recalled, “She also got the lead sheets of musicals before they were produced, and so she would start singing some of the songs even before they appeared on the Broadway stage. I think people just gave them to her.” 1
    This certainly was true of Coleman once he had been introduced to Mercer. Years later he looked back on their friendship and collaboration: “When I first started writing, she was the one who was picking up every song I wrote. And she did so many of my songs . . . even silly little things, and she would make them sound like something.” 2
    One such song was “The Riviera,” which had been intended for the John Murray Anderson show and then found its way to Atlantic’s third Songs by Mabel Mercer album, which carried the subtitle “Written Especially for Her.” Also on the disc was another Coleman-McCarthy song, “Early Morning Blues,” as well as tunes by writers like William Roy and Bart Howard, two