Walking in Johnny Mercer's Shoes

Click here to listen to Steve Lerner sing Walking in Johnny Mercer's Shoes. Use this link if you want to stream the song over your broadband connection. Otherwise, right click and click save target as to download the song.

Here's what Kansas psychologist Steve Lerner told Mid Morning Live recently about his song.

Steve Lerner: "The song is called Walking in Johnny Mercer’s Shoes. It’s a song that captures something about the love affair Johnny Mercer always had with Savannah . He never left Savannah in his heart even though he didn’t live here all his life. I think Savannah influenced many of his songs."

How did the song come about?

Steve Lerner: "I was visiting here, and I’ve always been a Johnny Mercer fan as was my dad before me. He was a piano player and knew all of Johnny’s songs. I was walking along and went out to his grave site and was just spending a few days in Savannah and just somehow got into thinking a lot about Johnny Mercer and what it must have been like when he grew up here which was a long time ago, but when you walk along these historical parts of Savannah it probably looks in some areas the way it did back then. I just started thinking about him, and the song just started coming out from the different things I saw here and the things I knew about Johnny Mercer. I was walking over by the Talmadge Bridge and heard an old guy playing trumpet late at night and the words just started coming to me. There you have it."

What makes this song so different from the hundreds of other songs you’ve written?

Steve Lerner: "I don’t think I ever wrote a song about a town before and a person’s relationship with their hometown. In a way we all have a hometown and can relate to that certain feeling of where you grew up. I didn’t grow up here, but I fell in love with this city right away. There’s something very special about it. I think the song captures pieces of that for me anyway and I hope it does for other people who live here.I think the love of Savannah that Johnny Mercer had which could translate into all of our feelings about our hometown. I think he never forgot Savannah . He said in an unpublished biography that he was writing before he died that when he thinks about Savannah the nostalgia is so strong that he can hardly bear it. That’s what I’d like people to take away. He just wants people to hear the song. Love for a Savannah musician to I’d love for this song to be a hit for savannah, for me and for Johnny.”