Johnny Mathis

Johnny Mathis – Christmas Time Is Here (2023)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 31:38 minutes | 648 MB | Genre: Pop, Easy Listening, Christmas
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Columbia – Legacy

Christmas Time Is Here is a brand-new full-length album from The Voice of Christmas himself, Johnny Mathis. Marking his seventh decade of recording, Christmas Time Is Here features unforgettable classics such as “Have Yourself A Merry Little Christmas,” “Auld Lang Syne,” and “Santa Claus Is Coming To Town” performed with Broadway superstar, Kristin Chenoweth. This album is yet another example of Johnny’s lasting music legacy, and the indelible impression he continues to have on everyone’s holiday season.

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Johnny Mathis – Christmas Time Is Here (2023)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 00:31:38 minutes | 648 MB | Genre: Ambiance, Musiques de Noël
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Digital Booklet, Front Cover

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Johnny Mathis – Killing Me Softly with Her Song (1973)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/192 kHz | Time – 39:57 minutes | 1,44 GB | Genre: Pop, Rock
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Columbia

The early 1970s was a tough time for established ballad singers, but Johnny Mathis, who was younger than his peers and Columbia Records labelmates like Tony Bennett and Andy Williams, weathered the lean times better than most. Some of the reasons why are suggested in this 1973 album. It wasn’t a big seller by any means, but this enjoyable, contemporary-sounding set made the charts. Basically, all Mathis did was turn on the radio and cut a bunch of soft rock and easy listening hits of the time the title song, a chart-topper for Roberta Flack, Bread’s “Aubrey,” Perry Como’s “And I Love You So,” the Stylistics’ “Break Up to Make Up,” Gladys Knight & the Pips’ “Neither One of Us (Wants to Be the First to Say Goodbye),” Skylark’s “Wildflower,” Stevie Wonder’s “You Are the Sunshine of My Life,” the Carpenters’ “Sing,” and Diana Ross’ “Good Morning Heartache.”

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Johnny Mathis – Warm (1957/2018)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 42:21 minutes | 900 MB | Genre: Pop
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Columbia – Legacy

Warm is an album by American pop singer Johnny Mathis that was released on November 11, 1957, by Columbia Records and, as with his previous LP, Wonderful Wonderful, does not include any of his hit singles but instead focuses primarily on his interpretations of romantic ballads that were already hits for other artists. Two new songs made the final cut, however: the title track and “The Lovely Things You Do”.
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Johnny Mathis – Song Sung Blue (1972/2018)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 44:15 minutes | 979 MB | Genre: Pop
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Columbia – Legacy

One of the last and most popular in a long line of traditional male vocalists who emerged before the rock-dominated 1960s, Johnny Mathis concentrated on romantic readings of jazz and pop standards for the ever-shrinking adult contemporary audience of the ’60s and ’70s. Though he debuted with a flurry of singles chart activity, Mathis later made it big in the album market, where a dozen of his LPs hit gold or platinum and over 60 made the charts. While he originally concentrated on theme-oriented albums of show tunes and traditional favorites, from the ’70s onward Mathis began incorporating more varied styles of music into his recordings, including soft rock, R&B, and country. This stylistic eclecticism, combined with ubiquitous vocal chops, helped Mathis remain a popular concert attraction well into the 21st century.
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Johnny Mathis – Sings the Music of Bert Kaempfert (1969/2018)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 36:42 minutes | 759 MB | Genre: Pop
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Columbia – Legacy

In a career spanning over 60 years, Johnny Mathis has always had an unerring ear for a song witness his new, 2017 album featuring his recordings of future standards by Adele, Bruno Mars, and Pharrell Williams. At the dawn of the 1970s, Mathis was celebrating the great songwriters of that day, too, with a double album entitled Johnny Mathis Sings the Music of Bacharach and Kaempfert. Real Gone Music and Second Disc Records are proud to inaugurate a series of Johnny’s greatest albums of the 1970s and beyond. First-ever reissue of The Music of Bacharach and Kaempfert. Bert Kaempfert may not have achieved the same name recognition in the U.S. as Burt Bacharach, but Kaempfert’s contributions to the standards songbook are indelible, thanks to such songs as “Danke Schoen,” “Spanish Eyes,” “Strangers in the Night,” and “L-O-V-E,” all of which are sung in Johnny’s inimitably intimate style on this collection. Johnny was joined by German arranger-conductor Herbert Rehbein, a close collaborator of Kaempfert’s, for these very special sessions. Johnny’s relationship with Burt Bacharach dated to the late 1950s with classics including “Heavenly” and “Faithfully.” Soon, Bacharach’s style would define the sound of the 1960s, and Johnny was bringing his individual stamp to “This Guy’s in Love with You,” “I Say a Little Prayer,” and “I’ll Never Fall in Love Again.” All of these songs and more are featured on Mathis’ Bacharach salute.
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Johnny Mathis – More: Johnny’s Greatest Hits (1959)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/44,1 kHz | Time – 34:23 minutes | 210 MB | Genre: Pop, Easy Listening
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Columbia

Columbia Records invented the “greatest hits” album by releasing Johnny Mathis’ Johnny’s Greatest Hits in March 1958, and was rewarded with a long-running #1 hit that spent years in the best-seller charts. Following it with a second volume More Johnny’s Greatest Hits was a no-brainer. Unfortunately, Columbia waited only 15 months between the two albums — long enough for Mathis to release five singles that all managed modest chart success, though none matched the hit status of songs from the first album, such as “It’s Not for Me to Say,” “Chances Are,” and “The Twelfth of Never.” “Teacher, Teacher” (the flipside of “All the Time,” which had appeared on the first album), “A Certain Smile,” “Call Me,” and “Small World” all made the Top 20 on at least one of the charts, but the album was filled with less-successful singles and B-sides. There are some excellent examples of the singer’s characteristic ballad style, but he also struggles with inferior uptempo material, and the album is uneven, especially in comparison to its predecessor. Nevertheless, it went gold and spent more than a year and a half in the charts, ample evidence of Mathis’s continuing appeal. ~ William Ruhlmann
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Johnny Mathis – Mathis On Broadway (2000/2018)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/48 kHz | Time – 32:54 minutes | 383 MB | Genre: Pop
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Columbia

Though Johnny Mathis has recorded many individual songs from Broadway musicals over the years, the last time he devoted an entire album to them was 1960’s The Rhythms and Ballads of Broadway, and the geography of the street has changed a lot since then. The Broadway of 2000 is a tourist attraction boasting a variety of kinds of musicals that were not available 40 years ago: oversized European operettas like Les Misérables and The Phantom of the Opera and American copycats like Jekyll & Hyde; Disney extravaganzas like The Lion King; retrospective anthology shows like Fosse; and rock musicals like Rent, along with revues of old rock & roll songs like Smokey Joe’s Café. It is music from such disparate sources that Mathis combines on Mathis on Broadway, fearlessly crossing barriers of style and quality. Wisely, he gets the ringers out of the way up front. “On Broadway,” despite its title, is a 1963 pop song interpolated in Smokey Joe’s Café, but it comes from an era Mathis is comfortable with and it serves as an excellent introduction. “Life Is Just a Bowl of Cherries” is a Broadway song, first heard in the 1931 edition of George White’s Scandals, though its reason for being here is its inclusion in Fosse, and Mathis’ playful reading is accompanied by the quartet from the show Forever Plaid. The rest of the album consists of songs actually written for and included in musicals of the ’80s and ’90s, and Mathis successfully smoothes over the wildly divergent styles, singing Stephen Sondheim’s “Loving You” from Passion as though it were a simpler, more tuneful song than it is, using “They Live in You” from The Lion King as a exotic change of pace, lowering the key of “Bring Him Home” from Les Misérables so that it no longer sounds like a vocal exercise for a castrato. One of Mathis’ talents has always been an ability to incorporate many different styles into his own; for a non-rock singer who emerged in the rock era, it’s been a necessity. Here, that talent serves to make the music of Frank Wildhorn, Stephen Sondheim, Andrew Lloyd Webber, and Jonathan Larson sound like it all belongs on the same musical street, just as those composers’ shows have occupied the same square mile of property in New York City. It’s a sleight of hand, of course, and that may be one reason why Mathis on Broadway is so short, running only 33 minutes, which, for a new, full-priced CD, is very skimpy. Maybe Mathis just couldn’t find any more songs without exploding the album’s fragile concept. (Okay, it’s more likely that song publishing royalties kept the tune count down.) In any case, the lesser talents among the composers — Lloyd Webber, Wildhorn, Claude-Michel Schönberg — owe Mathis a debt for making their music sound so good, while Sondheim can be grateful that Mathis makes him sound so accessible. ~ William Ruhlmann
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Johnny Mathis – Mathis Magic (1979/2018)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 41:24 minutes | 864 MB | Genre: Pop
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © SMCMG

Johnny Mathis is teamed with producer, arranger, and writer Thom Bell and his cohort, lyricist Linda Creed. Both became very popular for their works with the Spinners, Stylistics, and others. On this outing, Bell applies his ubiquitous arrangements to the dulcet yet captivating vocals of Mathis. The album did spawn one single in the title track, “I’m Coming Home.” It peaked on the Billboard R&B and pop charts at 92 and 75, respectively. Its flow is as beguiling as a cool summer’s night. Mathis even provides his own renditions of the seldom heard “I’m Stone in Love with You,” “Life Is a Song Worth Singing,” and “Stop, Look, Listen (To Your Heart).” Mathis’ articulation is just as precise as the Stylistics version, but with a classical feel. On the moderately paced “And I Think That’s What I’ll Do,” Mathis blends right in with the dynamic string and horn arrangement that Bell has crafted. Most of these numbers have that Stylistics, Spinners, and even Temptations aura, and are good listening songs.
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Johnny Mathis – Live (1988)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/44,1 kHz | Time – 43:39 minutes | 476 MB | Genre: Vocal Pop
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Columbia

Great voice from a master and I enjoy most of the song selections (although not all). There’s something about a live performance that outshines a studio track that is usually overproduced, etc. Live concerts sort of show if an entertainer can pull it off live or not. He’s a legend for a reason and it shows with this live recording.
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Johnny Mathis – Killing Me Softly with Her Song (1973/2018)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 39:57 minutes | 872 MB | Genre: Pop
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Columbia

The early 1970s was a tough time for established ballad singers, but Johnny Mathis, who was younger than his peers and Columbia Records labelmates like Tony Bennett and Andy Williams, weathered the lean times better than most. Some of the reasons why are suggested in this 1973 album. It wasn’t a big seller by any means, but this enjoyable, contemporary-sounding set made the charts. Basically, all Mathis did was turn on the radio and cut a bunch of soft rock and easy listening hits of the time — the title song, a chart-topper for Roberta Flack, Bread’s “Aubrey,” Perry Como’s “And I Love You So,” the Stylistics’ “Break Up to Make Up,” Gladys Knight & the Pips’ “Neither One of Us (Wants to Be the First to Say Goodbye),” Skylark’s “Wildflower,” Stevie Wonder’s “You Are the Sunshine of My Life,” the Carpenters’ “Sing,” and Diana Ross’ “Good Morning Heartache.” But unlike Bennett, who had dropped from Columbia the year before, Mathis had no resistance to contemporary material; he sounded fine singing it. And though he had never had much of an impact in the R&B market, he was an African-American who could handle the Stylistics and Gladys Knight songs credibly, substituting his trademark tremulousness for their more soulful approach. At the same time, he could match both Perry Como and newer soft-rock stars like Bread and the Carpenters. Of course, it’s not enough to cover other people’s hits, and the oddity of the album was that Mathis missed a hit he should have had. The album closed with producer Jerry Fuller’s “Show and Tell,” which Columbia released as a single and got a minor easy listening chart entry out of it, only to see a cover by Al Wilson become a gold-selling number one pop hit a few months later. On the whole, Killing Me Softly with Her Song was not a great Johnny Mathis album, but it was much better than the embarrassments suffered by others at the time. ~ William Ruhlmann
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Johnny Mathis – Johnny’s Greatest Hits (1958/2018)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/192 kHz | Time – 32:49 minutes | 717 MB | Genre: Pop
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Columbia

“Johnny’s Greatest Hits” is a compilation album by American vocalist Johnny Mathis that was released by Columbia Records in 1958, and has been described as the “original greatest-hits package”. It collected all but one of the songs from the first six singles he recorded, including eight A- and B-sides that made the singles charts in The Billboard (now simply known as Billboard magazine) as well as three B-sides that did not chart and one new track (“I Look at You”) that was co-written by Mathis but not released as a single. The collection includes “Chances Are”, “It’s Not for Me to Say”, “Wonderful! Wonderful!”, and “The Twelfth of Never”. This LP stayed on the charts for ten years.
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Johnny Mathis – Johnny Mathis Sings the Great New American Songbook (2017)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/48 kHz | Time – 45:45 minutes | 534 MB | Genre: Pop
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Columbia

Legendary vocalist Johnny Mathis will release his new album, „Johnny Mathis Sings The Great New American Songbook“. The eagerly awaited album features 11 inspired Mathis interpretations of prevailing current songs that comprise the modern great American songbook, all imbued with the iconic vocalist’s indelible touch.
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