Autographed Johnny Mathis Deluxe & Expanded Editions

Real Gone Music’s long love affair with The Voice of Romance continues to burn brightly with two more deluxe and expanded Johnny Mathis releases, both remastered by Mike Piacentini at Sony’s esteemed Battery Studios! First up is a single CD pairing 1976’s I Only Have Eyes for You and 1977’s Hold Me, Thrill Me, Kiss Me, two albums that reunited Mathis with a pair of his favorite collaborators, producer Jack Gold and arranger Gene Page, for silky renditions of the day’s pop smashes as only Mathis could deliver them.  Page brought the same style of lush orchestration he perfected with Barry White to these sets featuring songs by the top songwriters of the day including Neil Sedaka (“The Hungry Years”), Alan O’Day (“Do Me Wrong, But Do Me”), Stephen Sondheim (“Send in the Clowns”), Marvin Hamlisch (“One”), and the team of Michael Masser and Gerry Goffin (“Do You Know Where You’re Going To,” “I Always Knew I Had It in Me”).  I Only Have Eyes for You introduced the artist’s longtime concert favorite “Yellow Roses on Her Gown” and the Christmas perennial “When a Child Is Born,”while Hold Me, Thrill Me, Kiss Me found Mathis saluting his Columbia Records labelmate Barbra Streisand with the romantic “Evergreen,” breathing new life into the vintage standard “All the Things You Are,” and giving a classy spin to the Annie anthem “Tomorrow.” Two outtakes, “Experience” and Stevie Wonder’s spellbinding “If It’s Magic,” round out the package, whose liner notes by The Second Disc’s Joe Marchese feature not just fresh quotes from Johnny himself but also observations from songwriter Harriet Schock (“Ooh, What We Do”)!

Then, we cross over into the ‘80s with our Expanded Edition of Different Kinda Different, Johnny’s first album of the decade, which once again teamed Mathis with producer Jack Gold and arranger Gene Page for a set that lived up to its title.  Two sizzling pop-soul duets with singer Paulette McWilliams, “Different Kinda Different” and “I’d Do It All for You,” are at the heart of an eclectic release that also features tunes by Sammy Cahn, Teddy Randazzo, and Steve Dorff, plus a pair of classic standards (“Deep Purple,” “Temptation”), the timeless disco anthem “I Will Survive,” and the haunting film theme “With You I’m Born Again.”  Real Gone Music and Second Disc Records’ definitive Expanded Edition of Different Kinda Different features nearly an entire album’s worth of bonus tracks–nine in total!  These include a brace of exciting session outtakes such as Johnny’s velvety rendition of Lionel Richie’s “Three Times a Lady” and the new songs recorded for Mathis’ 1981 retrospective The First 25 Years–The Silver Anniversary Album.  The deluxe booklet features new liner notes by The Second Disc’s Joe Marchese drawing upon brand-new interviews with Johnny Mathis and Paulette McWilliams.

Johnny has autographed 100 booklets of each release, which Real Gone Music are giving away to those folks who order these titles from directly from them. But by now you also know that these sell out pretty quickly, so don’t take too long to order!