Bonaventure Cemetery, Savannah Georgia. by Paul Goldfinger.
When he died, he was buried in the family plot at the Bonaventure Cemetery, a famous public location in Savannah. His mother is buried nearby. We visited their site on a rainy day in Georgia. The monument was beautiful that day with all the Spanish moss hanging down as the rain softly fell through the foliage.
Johnny Mercer’s grave has lyrics from his songs, but there is one that was so perfect — at his mother’s site (photo above) — It said, “My momma done tol’ me.” This, of course is from his song (he wrote the lyrics, while Harold Arlen composed the music) to the great classic “Blues in the Night,”
BROOK BENTON. “Rainy Night in Georgia.”
Paul Goldfinger, Editor @Blogfinger.net
Jo Stafford — you almost never hear of her now, but she was very big in the 40s and had a voice of such purity. She and the Pied Pipers sang with Tommy Dorsey for a while. I just looked her up on Wikipedia and found an article containing this interesting paragraph:
“Her tenure with the USO, in which she gave countless performances for soldiers stationed in the US, led to her acquiring the nickname ‘G.I. Jo.’ On returning from the Pacific theater, a veteran told Stafford that the Japanese would play her records on loudspeakers in an attempt to make the US troops homesick enough to surrender; she personally replied to all letters she received from servicemen.”