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The Untold Truth Of Johnny Mathis

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Johnny Mathis sold millions of records and turned out classic soft pop singles for decades. Above all, however, he's best remembered as a musical chameleon, able to turn his hand to pretty much every genre under the sun. Here's the untold truth of one of pop music's foremost titans.

You might call the genre of music for which Johnny Mathis is known "traditional pop," or just plain pop — the kind of stuff sung by people like Nat King Cole or Tony Bennett, which dominated the music scene before rock n roll artists such as Elvis Presley upended things. But while Mathis is a consummate pro in his chosen style, it wasn't his first choice: He wanted to be a jazz singer, like his heroes Ella Fitzgerald, Sarah Vaughan, and Lena Horne.

While attending San Francisco State College, Mathis sang with a jazz band in nightclubs on the weekends. A club owner invited George Avakian, head of Columbia Records' jazz department, to come hear the 19-year-old Mathis sing. By 1956, Mathis was in New York, recording his first album, the vocal jazz LP Johnny Mathis: A New Sound in Popular Music. The album flopped, but Columbia artists and repertoire director Mitch Miller had an idea: He thought Mathis' voice was better suited to pop. Miller set up another session for Mathis, where he recorded what would become two hit singles: "Wonderful! Wonderful!" and "It's Not for Me to Say."

Mathis has remained extremely loyal to Columbia. Apart from a brief stint with Mercury Records in the mid-'60s, Mathis has made the label his professional home since 1956 — and today, he's by far their most experienced performer.

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Other roads | 0:00
Never Misty | 1:29
Greatest Hits | 2:19
Struggling with addiction | 3:29
Going soft | 4:38
Coming out | 5:42
The disco years | 6:59
A good sport | 8:04
On the fairway | 9:07
In the kitchen | 9:55

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