Phillip Officer: Phillip Officer Salutes Mabel Mercer: You Fascinate Me So

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Phillip Officer

Phillip Officer Salutes Mabel Mercer: You Fascinate Me So

(Center Stage Records)

October 31, 2025

Reviewed by Jacqueline Parker

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Although Mabel Mercer, one of the great influencers in the cabaret world, has been gone for several decades, her legacy of love of lyrics lingers on through Phillip Officer and his CD that salutes her. This is a CD that should be in the collection of every lover of the American Songbook, if only to begin to understand why people like Bobby Short and Frank Sinatra were inspired and taught by her. It is available digitally.

This carefully curated collection of songs that were sung by Mercer should not be listened to as a secondary activity. Rather, give yourself a rarified hour of pleasure—relax, and let the Mercer magic seduce you as Officer intelligently delivers numbers you realize you had taken for granted.

An unexpected pause, a word spoken rather than sung, a note sung a tone lower—these are all Mercerisms, tools she used to help her audience understand something that might not be apparent in a lyric. Officer has embraced that toolkit; he has mastered every one of Mabel’s tricks and delivers a slate of well-known standards that seem somehow new and fresh.

Give yourself the gift of listening to “The Ballad of the Sad Young Men” (Tommy Wolfe/Fran Landesman) and see if your heart is not moved by the poignancy Officer infuses in it. Or, for a change of pace, try “I’m Glad I’m Not Young Anymore” (Alan Jay Lerner/Frederick Lowe) to see how different that tune can sound when Officer sings it. He takes “How Little We Know” (Hoagy Carmichael/Johnny Mercer) out of the depths of film noir (To Have and Have Not) and reveals its inherent joyousness.

Officer was complemented in this recording by musicians Mark Hartman (piano), Ray Marchica (drums), Mollie Rose (violin), Kevin Kuhn (guitar), and Saadi Zain (bass) with exceptional arrangements by Mark Hartman, Mark Hummel, and Tex Arnold.

The only metaphor that seems appropriate to make clear that innate talent Officer has is to imagine a gorgeous fabric that in the hands of an ordinary seamstress can become a dress, but, in the hands of fashion designer Halston, becomes a timeless masterpiece.

Officer has always had the ability to make you feel that he’s singing only to you, because he senses that you need to really understand it in a way that is relevant to you at that moment. That has always been the magic of Mabel Mercer. Lucky us—she passed that torch to Phillip Officer.

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Jacqueline Parker

Like Ethel Merman, lifelong New Yorker Jacqueline Parker began her career as a stenographer. She spent more than two decades at the city's premier public agency, progressing through positions of increased responsibility after earning her BA in English from New York University (3.5 GPA/Dean’s List). She won national awards for her work in public relations and communication and had the privilege of working in the House of Commons for Stephen Ross, later Lord Ross of Newport. In the second half of her career, Jacqueline brought her innate organizational skills and creative talents to a variety of positions. While distinguishing herself in executive search, she also gave her talents to publishing, politics, writing, radio broadcasting and Delmonico's Restaurant. Most recently, she hosted Anything Goes! a radio show that paid homage to Cole Porter and by extension the world of Broadway musicals and the Great American Songbook. Other features of the show were New York living, classical music, books, restaurants, architecture and politics. This show highlighted the current Broadway scene, both in New York and around the country through performances and interviews with luminaries including Len Cariou, Charles Strouse, Laura Osnes, Steve Ross and Joan Copeland. Her pandemic project was immersion into the life, times and work of Alfred Hitchcock, about whom she has written a soon-to-be-published article. Jacqueline has been involved in a myriad of charitable causes, most notably the Walt Frazier Youth Foundation, St. Patrick's Cathedral, Sisters of Life, York Theatre, and the New Jersey Shakespeare Festival. She is a proud Founder of Hidden Water. Her greatest accomplishment is the parenting of her son, a lawyer specializing in mediation. She has many pretend grandchildren, nieces and nephews, on whom she dotes shamelessly, as well as a large circle of friends to whom she is devoted. Her interests in addition to theater and cabaret are cooking, entertaining, reading, and spending time on Queen Mary 2.