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“Hear that lonesome whistle blowing/'cross the trestle' John Mercer would write to Arlen's music, and suddenly Tin Pan Alley seemed to contain railway yards and bus depots that hadn't been there before. 'It's a quarter to three/there's no one in the place except you and me,' writes Mercer also, and Arlen's music conveys all the solitude of a roadhouse in the outback, as far from Johnny's Savannah' social register as it is from the Arluck parlor. Both Mercer and Arlen saw this other America as clearly as the half-British Raymond Chandler saw Los Angeles, with the freshness and sharpness of outsiders, and their songs constitute priceless social documents.” — Wilfrid Sheed
Hear that lonesome whistle blowing/'cross the trestle' John Mercer would write to Arlen's music, and suddenly Tin Pan Alley seemed to contain railway yards and bus depots that hadn't been there before. 'It's a quarter to three/there's no one in the place except you and me,' writes Mercer also, and Arlen's music conveys all the solitude of a roadhouse in the outback, as far from Johnny's Savannah' social register as it is from the Arluck parlor. Both Mercer and Arlen saw this other America as clearly as the half-British Raymond Chandler saw Los Angeles, with the freshness and sharpness of outsiders, and their songs constitute priceless social documents.