30/09/2022
Happy 87th birthday to singer John Royce "Johnny" Mathis born on September 30, 1935, starting his career with singles of standard music, he became highly popular as an album artist, with several dozen of his albums achieving gold or platinum status and 73 making the Billboard charts to date.
Although Mathis is frequently described as a romantic singer, his discography includes jazz, traditional pop, Brazilian music, Spanish music, soul music, rhythm and blues, soft rock, Broadway theatre, Tin Pan Alley standards, some blues and country songs, and even a few disco songs for his album Mathis Magic in 1979. Johnny also recorded five albums of Christmas music. In a 1968 interview, Mathis cited Lena Horne, Nat King Cole, and Bing Crosby among his musical influences.
Johnny has the distinction of having the longest tenure of any recording artist on the Columbia Records label. With the exception of a four-year break to record for Mercury Records in the mid-1960s, he has been with Columbia Records throughout his career, from 1956 to 1963 and from 1968 to the present. He has had five of his albums on the Billboard charts simultaneously, an achievement equaled by only two other singers: Frank Sinatra and Barry Manilow.
He has released 200 singles and had 71 songs charted around the world. Recordings historian Paul Gambaccini confirms Mathis's recordings have sold well over 350 million copies worldwide, and he is the third most successful recording artist in the US. This makes Johnny Mathis the third biggest selling recording artist of the 20th century, after only Elvis Presley and Frank Sinatra.
He has taped twelve of his own television specials and made over 300 television guest appearances, with 33 of them being on The Tonight Show. Longtime Tonight Show host Johnny Carson said, "Johnny Mathis is the best ballad singer in the world.” Through the years, his songs (or parts of them) have been heard in 100 plus television shows and films around the globe. His appearance on the Live by Request broadcast in May 1998 on the A&E Network had the largest television viewing audience of the series. continues to perform live, but from 2000 forward, he limited his concert performances to about fifty to sixty per year.
Artist:
