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Author:  David Luebbert Posted:  6/5/01; 5:51:51 AM Topic:  That Old Black Magic Msg#:  1886 (in response to 1885) Prev/Next:  1885/1887 Reads:  3843

Harold Arlen was the composer and Johnny Mercer was the lyricist.

This was easy to find out. Here's how I did it: I went to the Directory link that appears at the top of each SongTrellis page. From there I travelled to the Cool Links page. That has a link to the ASCAP ACE repretoire database. I launched a title query there for "Old Black Magic". The result of the query identified Arlen and Mercer.

Frustratingly, ACE only identifies those who participate in the copyright and does not actually specifiy which of the responsible parties was the composer and which was the lyricist. In this case, Johnny Mercer is well known as being a lyricist, since he's provided lyrics for tunes written by a multitude of different composers. Likewise, Arlen is known for having composed an amazing number of very successful songs.

Figuring out the first peformer is much harder. The ACE database lists all of the folks that ASCAP is aware of who have performed the song. This is not wonderful help in figuring out the first performer since 108 different performers are listed.

Doing a Google search on Old Black Magic, I found this link to the lyrics that identifies Louis Prima and Keeley Smith  as performers who had some kind of routine going with the tune: http://members.tripod.com/swingstyle/llist/lpcs/lpcs19.html

The routine makes me believe that this probably was from a movie although the movie is not identified by this page. The first performances of Arlen's tunes usually happened occurred during movies, since Arlen did most of his composing in Hollywood.

I changed the query to "Old Black Magic Prima" and looked some more.

This link seems to answer the question best is this one: http://www.johnnymercer.com/FAQ/THAT%20OLD%20BLACK%20MAGIC.htm

One of the entries there says:

: 1942. Johnny Mercer and Harold Arlen (Music). : Appeared in three films: Star Spangled Rhythm/Senior Prom-Louie Prima and Keely Smith/ Meet Danny Wilson-Frank Sinatra-Shelly Winters/

A follow on response recorded there says:

-------------------------------------

: Posted by William H. Crowe on February 11, 1998 at 16:55:01:

: In Reply to: That Old Black Magic posted by Ron on February 09, 1998 at 23:15:57:

: : Who was the male singer that first made Mercer's That Old Black Magic famous?

: It may be arguable just who made the song "famous" but our records show that Johnny Johnston introduced it in the
: movie "Star Spangled Rhythm" in 1942. Billy Daniels later made a hit record of it and of course Sinatra recorded it on
: several occasions.

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Answer: It looks like the first performer was Johnny Johnston, a now obscure actor from the 40s, who did it in the movie "Star Spangled Rhythm". Follow on performances were done in movies by Louis Prima and Keeley Smith, a husband and wife team, who did it for the film "Senior Prom", and Frank Sinatra who performed it in "Meet Danny Black".

Billy Daniels had the first hit with it. This link on Daniels (http://www.thisisbradford.co.uk/archive/2000/07/22/keig_news28.int.html)provided interesting info: "I discovered that my father was the first black man to host a television show in America. He appeared in eight Royal Variety performances and six Hollywood films"

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