Johnny Mathis sold millions of records and turned out classic soft pop singles for decades.
Above all, however, he's best remembered as a musical chameleon, able to turn his hand
to pretty much every genre under the sun.
Here's the untold truth of one of pop music's foremost titans.
You might call the genre of music for which Johnny Mathis is known "traditional pop,"
or just plain pop — the kind of stuff sung by people like Nat King Cole or Tony Bennett,
which dominated the music scene before rock n roll artists such as Elvis Presley upended
things.
But while Mathis is a consummate pro in his chosen style, it wasn't his first choice:
He wanted to be a jazz singer, like his heroes Ella Fitzgerald, Sarah Vaughan, and Lena Horne.
While attending San Francisco State College, Mathis sang with a jazz band in nightclubs
on the weekends.
A club owner invited George Avakian, head of Columbia Records' jazz department, to come
hear the 19-year-old Mathis sing.
By 1956, Mathis was in New York, recording his first album, the vocal jazz LP Johnny
Mathis: A New Sound in Popular Music.
The album flopped, but Columbia artists and repertoire director Mitch Miller had an idea:
He thought Mathis' voice was better suited to pop.
Miller set up another session for Mathis, where he recorded what would become two hit
singles: "Wonderful!
Wonderful!" and "It's Not for Me to Say."
Mathis has remained extremely loyal to Columbia.
Apart from a brief stint with Mercury Records in the mid-'60s, Mathis has made the label
his professional home since 1956 — and today, he's by far their most experienced performer.
In the 1950s and '60s, Johnny Mathis scored multiple singles on the Billboard Hot 100.
Arguably two of his best-known hits from this era are "The Twelfth of Never" and "Misty".
One other thing these timeless tunes have in common: Mathis wasn't particularly fond
of either of them.
As he once told the radio documentary series Pop Chronicles:
"I didn't like [The Twelfth of Never] because it was all so repetitious, and nothing seemed
to happen.
And I was really Joe College at that time.
I was right out of college and I was hot to trot.
I wanted to do something, you know, rah-rah-rah, something earth-shattering."
As for "Misty," he hadn't even planned on recording it.
The song was originally an instrumental by pianist Errol Garner, and Mathis said he'd
record it if Garner wrote some accompanying lyrics.
Some time later, Garner showed up to a Mathis recording session, much to the singer's chagrin.
As Mathis said:
"I was just praying that he would forget about it."
"Greatest hits" albums may be blatant cash grabs, but they've got their place regardless.
They make for a great overview or introduction to an artist's work, and often rank among
the best-selling albums of all time — for example, the Eagles' Their Greatest Hits is
actually the top-selling LP of any kind in American history.
In fact, greatest hits collections seem like such an obvious idea that it's hard to believe
anybody ever had to consciously invent them… but they did.
The first greatest hits album was Johnny Mathis' 1958 collection Johnny's Greatest Hits, released
less than two years into the singer's career.
Shortly after "It's Not for Me to Say" started climbing the charts, Mathis was offered a
chance to tour the United Kingdom, but before he left, Columbia Records wanted him to lay
down some more tracks.
He didn't have time to make that happen, however, so label chief Mitch Miller had another idea:
Compile the singer's singles.
Mathis later told SongFacts:
"He threw the first four recordings that I did — both sides of them — and called
them Johnny's Greatest Hits.
That was a little flamboyant, because it was not the greatest hits, yet."
Not only did Mathis help create a new way of selling music, but his gamble was enormously
successful – Johnny's Greatest Hits spent nine and a half years on the Billboard albums
chart.
Johnny Mathis was close friends with First Lady Nancy Reagan, who urged American kids
to resist drugs by imploring them to "Just Say No."
She also directly helped Mathis break his dependence on alcohol.
Under Reagan's direction, Mathis checked into the Havre de Grace rehabilitation center in
Maryland.
"I had three weeks of finding out why I drank, how I could stop.
It was the greatest thing that ever happened to me in my life."
That marked the second time Mathis fought a substance abuse issue.
In the early '60s, he placed himself under the care of Dr. Max Jacobson, a classic "Dr.
Feelgood" type who prescribed hefty doses of drugs to his celebrity clientele.
Dr. Jacobson, who infamously treated JFK's back pain, utilized so-called "miracle tissue
regenerator" treatments that included the use of amphetamines.
Mathis' use of these drugs even left him hospitalized for a spell.
As Mathis told The Express:
"I went to see him because I was doing five shows a night at the Copacabana in New York
and got laryngitis.
Everyone on Broadway went to him.
[...] He gave me vitamin shots which brought my voice back beautifully but left me with
a drug addiction.
It was very traumatic but I just had to stop."
By 1978, it had been 15 years since Mathis had reached the top 10, and he hadn't made
the pop chart at all since early 1974.
Mathis and his producer, Jack Gold, realized if they wanted Mathis to stay relevant, they'd
have to stage a comeback.
Luckily, Gold had heard good things about up-and-coming singer Deniece Williams.
Mathis later told Billboard:
"We knew Deniece was big in the R&B area so I said, 'maybe we can get some of the R&B
diehards to listen to some of my music."
Williams was excited to collaborate with Mathis but didn't think the song they'd recorded
together, titled "Too Much, Too Little, Too Late," was good enough for release.
Indeed, the singer later told The Washington Post that they had only recorded two or three
takes of the tune.
But Williams was wrong — the song hit #1 in the US, a career first for both Mathis
and Williams.
The duo rushed into the studio to record That's What Friends Are For, an entire album of duets,
which produced a minor hit in "You're All I Need to Get By" and led to the recording
of "Without Us," which would eventually become what's likely Mathis' most frequently heard
song — largely because it was used as the theme song for the hit '80s sitcom Family
Ties.
Johnny Mathis came up in an era when being gay was not seen as okay.
The idea was so widely despised that to be out and proud could quickly end a career.
Still, rumors persisted about the romantic preferences of certain celebrities, including
Johnny Mathis.
Mathis' success was built on an ambiguous kind of sexual romanticism, and he kept his
own love life extremely private.
In a 1982 profile in Us Weekly, however, Mathis came out, saying:
"Homosexuality is a way of life that I've grown accustomed to."
The backlash was swift and frightening, and the statement was soon retracted.
The singer later told The Sunday Express:
"I've had a few death threats from the Southern states [...] I'd had enough exposure and was
concerned about what came with it."
So Mathis cut down on pre-concert publicity in order to limit the number of hostiles who'd
know about his appearances in advance.
He also declined to speak on the topic of his sexuality for decades.
In 2017, however, he opened up a little more during his appearance on CBS Sunday Morning.
"I come from San Francisco.
It's not unusual to be gay in San Francisco."
As a result, he didn't expect the kind of unfortunate backlash he received.
"I thought it was maybe a little bit blown out of proportion."
On the heels of his late '70s soft rock comeback with Deniece Williams, Johnny Mathis delved
into the era's other dominant musical form: disco.
The singer teamed up with two of the genre's luminaries: Bernard Edwards and Nile Rogers,
the writers, producers, and leaders of the legendary band Chic.
The duo would ultimately help David Bowie and Diana Ross reinvent themselves as dance
music performers, and they tried to do the same for Mathis with the 1981 album I Love
My Lady.
Sadly, upon its completion, Columbia Records basically pretended the album didn't exist.
No one at the company took any steps to release it, choosing instead to send a greatest hits
album to stores.
In 2011, Mathis told BBC Radio 4's Front Row why he believed the album wasn't released
at the time.
"The record company is almighty when you're making music to sell.
They have their likes and dislikes."
Luckily, I Love My Lady did finally reach fans... in 2017, buried among The Voice of
Romance: The Columbia Original Album Collection, a comprehensive 68-disc box set of Mathis's
works.
Not merely an incredible singer, Johnny Mathis is also pretty great at sports.
Mathis was a standout athlete as a teenager, being a member of both the basketball and
track and field teams at San Francisco's George Washington High School.
Mathis was so skilled at the high jump that it earned him an athletic scholarship to San
Francisco State College.
He could regularly and easily clear 6'5", even though he was a relatively short 5'7".
Mathis' crosstown rival was 6'9" University of San Francisco high jumper Bill Russell,
who went on to win 11 NBA championships with the Boston Celtics.
Nevertheless, Mathis once managed to beat Russell, clearing 6'5" at a tournament in
Nevada.
All that earned Mathis an invitation to attend the 1956 Olympic trials.
Although they were being held not too far from home in Berkeley, California, Mathis
couldn't go — the same week he got the call from the Olympics, he was summoned to New
York for his first recording session.
Nevertheless, Mathis's impact on Bay Area track is still felt: The Johnny Mathis Invitational
remains a major sports event in San Francisco.
Johnny Mathis was a remarkable athlete as a teenager, but he didn't discover his passion
for golf until adulthood — during some time off during a stand at the Sands Hotel in Las
Vegas in 1965.
The singer is a member at three different golf clubs in the Los Angeles area and plays
about 300 times a year.
As he once said:
"It's the only social activity I have.
I have never socialized with other entertainers.
But I enjoy the company of golfers."
Of course, all that practice is going to make a person pretty skilled, and Mathis is indeed
an excellent duffer.
He played in pro-ams alongside monumental golfers like Lee Trevino and Jack Nicklaus
and took lessons from players on the PGA Tour.
He got his handicap down to a seven, and has even hit a hole in one on an impressive nine
separate occasions.
The singer also hosted his own tournament on the seniors circuit in 1985 and 1986.
It's plenty normal for rich and famous celebrities to employ a private chef, if not a kitchen
staff.
After all, they've got the money for it — and they're often just too busy to shop or cook
for themselves.
But Johnny Mathis isn't that kind of celebrity.
Both of his parents worked as cooks in the kitchens of wealthy homes, and they passed
on their skills to their son.
Mathis told South Sound:
"I kind of watched over them and wanted to cook."
He added that he enjoys dedicating hours on end to cooking a single meal, and even does
this on the road, if he can.
When extended-stay, kitchen-enabled hotels like Residence Inn came on the scene a few
years ago, Mathis was, in his words, over the moon.
Mathis actually has an entire room in his house that serves as a cookbook library, and once
told The Times of Northwest India that his collection numbers in the thousands.
As he himself says:
"When I go out shopping and pass a bookstore, I always grab a couple of cookbooks."
Mathis even wrote his own cookbook in 1982.
Cooking for You Alone focuses on the unique challenges of preparing meals for just one
person at a time — something Mathis, who lives alone, has come to perfect over the
years.
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