JOHNNY MATHIS

<BODY TEXT="#000000" LINK="#666666" VLINK="#000000" ALINK="#FFFFFF" BGCOLOR="#999999">   Recipient of the Recording Academy's Lifetime Achievement Award last year, virtual lifelong Columbia recording artist Johnny Mathis - who turns 70 next year - was still a teenager in college when the record company 'discovered' him singing in a San Francisco nightclub in 1955. He was not yet 21 when he finally arrived in New York City for his first recording sessions in '56. Nearly five decades later, THE ESSENTIAL JOHNNY MATHIS celebrates one of the most enduring careers in popular music, an artist who has been a presence on the singles and albums charts in every decade from the '50s to the '00s. Gathering 40 songs on 2 CDs - 17 chart singles and 23 distinctively chosen album tracks - the album will arrive in stores May 4th on Columbia/Legacy, a division of Sony Music. Johnny Mathis now joins the prestigious family of Columbia and Epic artists who have already been 'inducted' into the Essential Series of double-CDs. The list includes Tony Bennett, Dave Brubeck, the Byrds, Johnny Cash, Cheap Trick, the Clash, Leonard Cohen, Ray Conniff, Miles Davis, Neil Diamond, Bob Dylan, Earth, Wind & Fire, Heart, Mahalia Jackson, Janis Joplin, Billy Joel, Journey, Kris Kristofferson, Kenny Loggins, Willie Nelson, Laura Nyro, Ozzy Osbourne, Santana, Earl Scruggs, Simon & Garfunkel, Sly & the Family Stone, Igor Stravinsky, Barbra Streisand, Luther Vandross, Stevie Ray Vaughan & Double Trouble, and in a special multi-artist "tribute," the songs of George Gershwin. Four of these collections have been certified RIAA gold: Neil Diamond, Bob Dylan, Billy Joel, and Barbra Streisand. Johnny Mathis, the only recording act in history with two LPs listed in the Top 10 (even the Top 25) on Joel Whitburn's "Albums Of Longevity" chart - 1958's Johnny's Greatest Hits (at 490 weeks in Billboard, that's more than 9 years!) and 1959's Heavenly (at 295 weeks) - is an iconic figure in pop music history. Born the same year as Elvis Presley, whose chart reign began in 1956, Mathis scored his first six consecutive smash hits in '57 - "Wonderful! Wonderful!," "It's Not For Me To Say," "Chances Are" (his first #1), "The Twelfth Of Never," "No Love (But Your Love)," and "Wild Is The Wind." They are all heard in their glorious AM radio mono mixes, together for the first time in one set, within the first 23 minutes or so of THE ESSENTIAL JOHNNY MATHIS. This collection goes on to present nearly a dozen more Johnny Mathis chart hits, several of which - like "Teacher, Teacher," "A Certain Smile," and "Small World" - are rarely included on anthologies of his Columbia years. Interspersed throughout by compilation producers Didier C. Deutsch and Darcy M. Proper of Sony Music Studios in New York, are specially selected album tracks. Many of these, including "Dancing On The Ceiling" (from the Broadway musical, Evergreen), "The Sweetheart Tree" (from the film, The Great Race), and Bacharach & David's "The Look Of Love" have never appeared on any major charted collection. Two songs from Mathis' hiatus on Mercury Records in the '60s, "The Sweetheart Tree" and "On A Clear Day You See Forever" (included on The Global Masters, Columbia/Legacy's 1997 compilation of those Mercury years) are also featured on THE ESSENTIAL JOHNNY MATHIS. Like The King, Johnny Mathis charted consistently through the 1950s, '60s, and '70s, landing more than 40 singles and more than 60 LPs in Billboard during those three decades alone. In 1978, the year after Elvis' death, Mathis' career came full with his long-awaited second #1 single chart hit, "Too Much, Too Little, Too Late," a duet with fellow Columbia artist Deniece Williams. In the quarter-century since then, Mathis has devoted himself to a unique series of album projects that have been enthusiastically received by his public. Friends In Love, for example, was the 1982 album whose title tune duet with Dionne Warwick (written by David Foster, Bill Champlin, and producer Jay Graydon), gave Johnny Mathis the rare distinction of having a top 40 single hit in a 4th consecutive decade. "Prelude To A Kiss" is a reminder of the tribute he released in 1990, In A Sentimental Mood: Mathis Sings Ellington, an entire album of songs associated with the Duke. Similarly, 1993's How Do You Keep The Music Playing? was a concept album of songs written by Michel Legrand and Alan & Marilyn Bergman, with Legrand on piano and conducting a full orchestra; it is the source of Mathis' remake of What Are You Doing The Rest Of Your Life?" (from the 1968 film, The Birthday Party) a song he first recorded for his 1971 LP, Love Story. The singer reprised the concept in 1998 for Because You Loved Me, an entire album of Diane Warren compositions, whose title tune and "Unbreak My Heart" are heard on THE ESSENTIAL JOHNNY MATHIS. His most recent recording of contemporary material was released in 2000, the thematic album Mathis On Broadway. In addition to up-to-date selections from Rent, Les Miserables, Phantom Of the Opera and others, Mathis does some updating of his own: "Life Is Just A Bowl Of Cherries" with the cast of Forever Plaid (via Fosse, from George White's Scandals of 1931) and Leiber-Stoller's "On Broadway" (from Smokey Joe's Cafe). "Few performers had captured the idealistic dreams of his generation like Mathis," wrote James Gavin (Grammy-nominated biographer of Ella Fitzgerald and Chet Baker). "His voice - a nasal tenor with high notes as light as a choirboy's - remains one of the most idiosyncratic in pop ... Whereas the singing of Frank Sinatra or Peggy Lee teemed with sexual undertones, Mathis' rang out angelically, offering the promise - or at least the illusion - that romance was forever& Then and now, Mathis sings to the lovestruck adolescent in everyone."   <font face="arial,helvetica" size="2"> <B>Your browser does not support frames!</B><BR><BR> Some of the features on this site require a frames-capable browser. 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