Johnny
Mathis' near 60-year tenure as a core artist at Columbia Records was only
interrupted once, when he founded his own production company, Global Records,
for a four-year stay at Mercury Records from 1963 to 1967. His entire album output for that label
(virtually every title rare and out of print for decades) is brought back into
full focus with the release of the deluxe box set, THE COMPLETE GLOBAL ALBUMS
COLLECTION. This 13-CD clamshell-design package, with personal album-by-album
annotations by Johnny, will be available everywhere on November 17th through
Columbia/Legacy.
During
the course of his Global/Mercury period, Johnny released 10 individual LPs, all
of which have been digitally remastered for this new box set:
•The
Sounds Of Christmas (1963)
•Tender
Is The Night (1964)
•The
Wonderful World Of Make-Believe (1964)
•This Is
Love (1964)
•Ole
(1965)
•Love Is
Everything (1965)
•The
Sweetheart Tree (international edition, aka Away From Home, 1965)
•The
Shadow Of Your Smile (1966)
•So Nice
(1966)
•Johnny
Mathis Sings (1967)
In
addition to these titles, THE COMPLETE GLOBAL ALBUMS COLLECTION will contain
two more volumes of material of essential interest to Mathis collectors and
completists:
•Broadway
(a "lost" album largely consisting entirely of previously unreleased
covers of Broadway show tunes, recorded 1964-1965)
•The
Global Singles and Unreleased (2 CDs of non-album singles and unreleased songs)
THE
COMPLETE GLOBAL ALBUMS COLLECTION celebrates the versatile and distinctive
voice of Johnny Mathis, who has been enchanting audiences around the world
since the age of 19. He was an athletic
scholarship freshman at San Francisco State College in 1955, when Columbia
staff A&R producer George Avakian 'discovered' him singing in a Bay Area
nightclub. Johnny was not yet 21 when he
finally arrived in New York City for his first recording sessions with Avakian
in '56. Columbia A&R chief Mitch Miller took over Johnny's hitmaking
production reins from 1957 to 1960.
Mathis
scored his first string of 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."
He went on to enjoy one of the most enduring careers in popular music,
an artist who has been present on the singles and albums charts in every decade
from the '50s to the '10s. He remains
the only recording act in history with two LPs listed in the Billboard Top 10
(even the Top 25) on Joel Whitburn's "Albums Of Longevity" chart –
1958's Johnny's Greatest Hits (at 490 weeks, that's over nine years!) and
1959's Heavenly (at 295 weeks) – iconic achievements in pop music history.
Johnny
suddenly decamped for Mercury Records (Miller's pre-Columbia label) in
1963. With the launch of his Global
Records imprint, Johnny was embarking on a new and challenging chapter of his
already illustrious career. His first LP
under the new deal was The Sounds Of Christmas (1963, his second career
Christmas LP), produced by arranger/conductor Don Costa. Without Miller's input, Johnny made the bold
decision to self-produce many of the Global titles, starting with his second
release, Tender Is The Night (1964).
"All
of a sudden," Mathis notes in his new introduction, written especially for
this box set, "I was in charge of my own decisions in the studio, and I didn't
have someone to guide me on what I was doing, right or wrong… I wasn't a
producer, and I didn't realize until then how important producers were and how
much they assisted me in my work. I
tried to do what I could, but I had no idea what would be good for the
market."
Johnny's
oft-overlooked Global recordings have always cried out for a more in-depth look
at their importance, given his lack of regard at the time for current
trends. With that in mind, THE COMPLETE
GLOBAL ALBUMS COLLECTION offers a dazzling array of familiar pop standards and
unique musical experiments. Titles are
as diverse as the Spanish language Ole (1965) and the forward-looking The
Sweetheart Tree (1965), recorded in London.
Over the course of his Global recordings, Johnny collaborated with
arrangers and conductors familiar from his time at Columbia (Costa, Glenn
Osser) and drew on material by everyone from the Beatles, to Johnny Mercer,
Bacharach-David, Bricusse-Newley, Brazilian composers Antonio Carlos Jobim and
Luiz Bonfa, even Gerry Goffin-Carole King.
Although
the quality and production of Johnny Mathis' Global recordings have never been
in dispute, the albums did not yield any major commercial breakthroughs as
compared to his Columbia success, and were mostly out-of-print by the end of
the '60s. Johnny returned to Columbia on
a high-note in 1967, with his Up, Up and Away LP vaulting inside the Top 20 on
the Billboard R&B chart, boosted by his Top 40 AC hit cover of Tim Hardin's
"Misty Roses."
"Few
performers had captured the idealistic dreams of his generation like
Mathis," wrote James Gavin (Grammy-nominated biographer of Ella Fitzgerald
and Chet Baker) in his liner notes to Legacy's 2-CD, 24-song compilation, The
Global Masters, released back in 1997.
"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."
THE
COMPLETE GLOBAL ALBUMS COLLECTION
1. The Sounds Of Christmas (1963)
2. Tender Is The Night (1964)
3. The Wonderful World Of Make-Believe (1964)
4. This Is Love (1964)
5. Ole (1965)
6. Love Is Everything (1965)
7. The Sweetheart Tree (international edition,
aka Away From Home, 1965)
8. The Shadow Of Your Smile (1966)
9. So Nice (1966)
10. Johnny Mathis Sings (1967)
Plus:
11. Broadway (previously unreleased
"lost" album of show tunes, recorded 1964-1965)
12. The Global Singles and Unreleased (2 CDs,
non-album singles and unreleased songs)
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