One night in 1961, Andy Williams heard a ballad that Johnny Mercer and Henry Mancini had written to be performed by Audrey Hepburn in the film Breakfast at Tiffany's. The singer loved the song, but his record label wouldn't release it as a single, fretting that homespun phrases like "my huckleberry friend" would baffle the kids. So Williams moved to Columbia Records and put the number on a 1962 album, Moon River and Other Great Movie Themes. The song won an Oscar, and the American midcentury's most amiable pop baritone, who died of bladder cancer Sept. 25 at 84 at his...
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