Johnny Mathis, who turns 90 Sept. 30, has quit performing, but he has come a long way since he was a high school track athlete in San Francisco 75 years ago. Fans can leave birthday greetings at his website, JohnnyMathis.com.
Courtesy photo
By Bill Vaughan
Entertainment Writer
Legendary crooner JOHNNY MATHIS was in a celebratory mood when we spoke a decade ago. The eternally youthful looking icon had just reached his 80th birthday on the heels of the release of “Johnny Mathis: The Singles.”
This definitive four-disc anthology brought together his landmark hits including “It’s Not For Me To Say,” “Chances Are,” “The Twelfth of Never” and “Wonderful! Wonderful!”
Mathis, who has recorded for Columbia Records since he was a teen, is regarded as the originator of the “greatest hits” album. What separates this collection from the others is that 31 of the 87 tracks were being released on CD for the very first time.
“It’s the good, the bad and the ugly,” he softly said about this compilation before laughing. “I tell you once you record this stuff and say, please don’t ever show that the light of day, everybody swears that they’ll never release it. Then the hierarchy at the record companies changes all the time. So if you miss these new presidents, they’ll release anything that they have — and they have.”
“[There’s] a lot of wonderful stuff that I did and don’t even remember doing,” Mathis added. What he did recall were the many talents he rubbed shoulders with while doing his music.
“I would go to the studio and of course, whoever was there recording before me I would meet,” he said. “I met people like Leonard Bernstein and Mahalia Jackson. I loved her spirit and her singing. All of that is vivid in my mind when I listen to these recordings.”
Over the years, Mathis has performed with some of the most extraordinary singers in the world. From divas Beverly Sills and Leontyne Price to popular goddesses Lena Horne, Dionne Warwick and Deniece Williams, with whom he scored a number one hit in 1978 with “Too Much, Too Little, Too Late” and later a duets album called “That’s What Friends Are For.”
“It’s like a dream,” he acknowledged. “You know I’m a little kid from San Francisco. I was a high jumper and a hurdler on the track team. I sang with my dad who was my best pal. He was a singer, and he said, ‘Come on, son. Sing this song with me.’ And that’s how I got started.”
Mathis was looking at the songbooks of some of today’s hit-makers like Pharrell Williams, Adele and Sam Smith for his return to the recording studio.
“I have four songs that I think are dynamite, but I have to get five or six more,” he said.
As for that milestone, he said, “I’m 80 years old and I don’t know what to do. Birthdays come along so fast now. I remember when I was 40 and it seems like only yesterday. Quincy Jones is the only person that I know that I’m very, very close to, that’s just a little bit older than I am. I’ll get his input.”
Flash forward to May of this year, when Mathis, citing “age and memory issues which have accelerated,” gave his final performance at the Bergen Performing Arts Center in Englewood, New Jersey.
He reaches his 90th birthday on Sept. 30. His loved ones and many fans are urged to leave messages for “The Voice of Romance” at JohnnyMathis.com.
