NRR Project: 'Ac-cent-Tchu-Ate the Positive’ (Oct. 4, 1944)

 

NRR Project: ‘Ac-cent-Tchu-Ate the Positive’

Music by Harold Arlen; lyrics by Johnny Mercer

Sung by Johnny Mercer

Recorded Oct. 4, 1944

2:48

Johnny Mercer (1909-1976). What a giant. He was a famed lyricist, honored songwriter, popular singer. He co-founded Capitol Records. He won four Oscars for Best Original Song. He was nominated 19 times.

What did he write, or have a hand in writing? Some are “I’m an Old Cowhand,” “Too Marvelous for Words,” “Hooray for Hollywood,” “Jeepers Creepers,” “You Must Have Been a Beautiful Baby,” “Blues in the Night,” “One for My Baby,” “That Old Black Magic,” “Laura,” “Autumn Leaves,” “On the Atcheson, Topeka, and the Santa Fe,” “I Remember You”. He worked on around 1,500 songs. (He also had an affair when he was 35, married, and a new child – with a 19-year-old Judy Garland.)

And he sang. Mercer was hip, he was from Savannah, Georgia. He had a comical drawl he would fall into when he sang that was folksy and charming. He could sell his songs, so they put him in front of a microphone at let him do his stuff.

The song is framed as a bluesy sermon:

“Gather 'round me, everybody

Gather 'round me while I'm preachin'

Feel a sermon comin' on me

The topic will be sin and that's what I'm ag'in'

If you wanna hear my story

The settle back and just sit tight

While I start reviewin’

The attitude of doin' right

 

You've got to accentuate the positive

Eliminate the negative

And latch on to the affirmative

Don't mess with Mister In-Between

 

You've got to spread joy up to the maximum

Bring gloom down to the minimum

Have faith or pandemonium's

Liable to walk upon the scene

 

To illustrate my last remark

Jonah in the whale, Noah in the ark

What did they do just when everything looked so dark?

 

(Man, they said "We'd better accentuate the positive")

("Eliminate the negative")

("And latch on to the affirmative")

Don't mess with Mister In-Between (No!)

Don't mess with Mister In-Between!”

Mercer sells it with a sincere, super- cool delivery. In the throes of World War II, songs like this were a comfort to folks at home. Looking up and staying brave were character traits stressed at the time. The Allies were looking close to conquering Germany in the fall of 1944; the Battle of the Bulge would ignite in December. The nation wanted to believe that right made might, a continental myth of martial prowess combined with virtue that would come to paper over many a fault.

So Mercer gives us a feel-good toe-tapper that’s catchy and emblematic of the call to think positively in the face of international tragedy. It’s an aural pick-me-up.

The National Recording Registry Project tracks one writer’s expedition through all the recordings in the National Recording Registry in chronological order. Next time: Sister Rosetta Tharpe and ‘Down by the Riverside.’