05.09.19

PW OPINION PW NEWS PW LIFE PW ARTS
brothers and sisters to join him, but I was the
only one who showed any interest,” recalls
Mathis, whose brother Ralph later became a
popular singer in the Los Angeles area, with
a longtime residency at the popular former
nightclub Jax Bar & Grill in Glendale. “He
[his father] showed up at this apartment we
lived in with a bunch of sticks one night,
dragged it all into the little living room and
spent hours and hours at night doing something
and we woke up the next morning and
he had constructed a piano.
“From that time on, I was hooked on singing
and listening to my dad who was my best
pal, the beginning of a wonderful life not
only musically but a connection with my father
who is always fresh in my mind,” Mathis
adds. “He was a wonderful, wonderful man
who with my mom raised seven children in
a tiny house. We never wanted for anything,
especially music.”
When Johnny was 13, Clem helped his
son land one of the best vocal teachers in the
Bay Area, Connie Cox, leading to six years
of learning vocal scales and exercises, voice
production, classical and operatic skills. At
the same time, Mathis was also renowned for
his remarkable athletic abilities at George
Washington High School, where he was a
star athlete on the track and field team as a
high jumper and hurdler and played on the
basketball team.
Enrolling at San Francisco State College
(now University) in 1954, Mathis intended to be
an English and physical education teacher and
set a school record on the high jump. Coaches
with the Olympics came calling, and he
seemed ready to pursue that opportunity fully
when he suddenly was signed by a manager for
his singing and she convinced Columbia Records
to offer him a contract at the age of 19.
“I think if you ask most kids what they
do, they have time to do everything because
you have energy when you’re young,” Mathis
says, when asked how he managed to excel
at both sports and music while engaged in
college. “I was also president of my student
body. That was what I did, buoyed by the
enthusiasm voice teachers and coaches
showed on my behalf. They were excited for
me to participate and that was the foundation
for my learning, especially music. I was
a very, very lucky person.”
Mathis, 83, had already fallen in love
with the standards sung by jazzy stars like
Lena Horne and Nat King Cole during his
forays into San Francisco’s nightclubs with
his father as a teen. Thus, it wasn’t difficult
to slip into the role of romantic crooner at a
time when the musical tastes of his teenage
peers were quickly shifting to the revved-up
energy of rock and roll.
He was summoned to New York City in
1956 to record his first album at the incredibly
young age of 19, with his family banking
that if the recording industry didn’t work out
he could always resume his college studies.
That first album was a collection of jazzoriented
renditions of popular stand ards
titled “Johnny Mathis: A New Sound In Popular
Song.” The album enjoyed only moderate
success because jazz vocal albums were not
good sellers, but Mathis got a second shot
that same year when he was paired with
mega-producer Mitch Miller.
Miller favored using Mathis’ voice to sing
soft, romantic ballads, and that instinct paid
off when the singer recorded smash hits
“Wonderful, Wonderful” and “It’s Not For
Me to Say.” His first No.1, “Chances Are,” followed
shortly afterward.
“Most of the decisions I made about
what I would sing were because of the
timbre and quality of my voice,” explains
Mathis. “I had the capabilities of singing
very high and low, loud and soft, because
of my voice lessons. We needed songs that
would challenge me and the pop songs
weren’t, so my voice teacher got me involved
in classical music.
“We concentrated on singing songs that
taxed my vocal qualities, as opposed to what
was on the radio,” he adds. “It wasn’t that I
didn’t want to sing pop music, but we wanted
to enhance my vocal qualities with opera.
From the time I was 13 years old in voice
lessons we spent a lot of time singing opera.
I ended up singing the pop songs of the day,
but I did get the essence of vocal quality and
using your voice to its fullest extent by my
singing classical music.”
Mathis really took off when he appeared
on “The Ed Sullivan Show” in June 1957,
resulting in millions of copies sold for both
his albums and singles. The demand for “the
velvet voice,” as he came to be known, was
so great that he often had four albums at
a time on the Billboard charts, and within
two years Columbia Records released his
first greatest-hits album. The album set a
Guinness World Record by appearing for
490 consecutive weeks on the Billboard Top
Albums chart.
“When you’re young like that, you expect
to go to the moon and if you get halfway
you’re happy,” he laughs. “Yes, I had a lot
of success. When I made my recordings, I
was by myself in New York working with
my producers, but I didn’t have any success
for about a year. My parents sent me money
occasionally, but they didn’t have much.
“If I hadn’t had the success with singing
records, I would have gone back home to San
Francisco and started over again, but I was
very, very fortunate,” he adds. “From the first
hit, it just went on and on and on. It has been
a blessing for me.” n
Johnny Mathis will perform at 8 p.m next Thursday,
May 16 at the Pasadena Civic Auditorium, 300 E.
Green St., Pasadena. Tickets are $59 to $99. Visit
ticketmaster.com.
05.09.19 | PASADENA WEEKLY 15