Johnny Mathis Interview (page: 5 / 7) Grammy Hall of Fame	Print Interview

Your first album was quite jazz-oriented, but Mitch Miller at Columbia Records chose a different direction for your second. How did that come about?

Johnny Mathis: George Avakian and Mitch Miller were producers. They were in the same building. This is before they had the title "producer." All they did was get the record made.

Get the Flash Player to see this video. Before I had a chance to leave New York and come back to San Francisco, I was heard by Mitch Miller. Evidently someone at the building played one of my songs for him. He would never listen to anything jazz-orientated. He was quite adamant about the fact that he didn't like jazz and he didn't like anybody who's going to sing jazz. So getting my recording to him was probably a very big stroke of luck, but somehow he heard it, and he liked my voice, but he didn't like what I was singing.

What were you singing?

Get the Flash Player to see this video. Johnny Mathis: I was singing songs like "Babalu" in Spanish, but the Spanish was lousy. And I was accompanied by people like John Lewis of the Modern Jazz Quartet. I had a ball with all these jazz musicians for the first year and a half of my recording career. But nothing really happened to the recordings. Nobody played them, nobody listened to them, I guess. Then I met Mitch, and he gave me a stack of records to listen to and said, "Choose four." And I chose a song called "When Sunny Gets Blue," a song called "Wonderful! Wonderful!" and a song called "It's Not for Me to Say." We went in the studio and recorded them, and he stood in back of me and patted me on the back while I was singing, which is very difficult to sing if somebody's patting you on the back. But he got what he wanted, and I just sang the melody. I didn't improvise or try to.

Were all those songs on the album that you did with him?

Johnny Mathis: Yes, all of those songs. Right from the beginning, the first songs that I sang in that way, in that "Johnny Mathis style," were and have been a big part of my career.

So the "Johnny Mathis style" was created then, with Mitch Miller patting you on the back?

Johnny Mathis: Yes.

Get the Flash Player to see this video. I had outlived my Lena Horne impressions and my Nat King Cole impressions and my Billy Eckstine impressions. He wouldn't have any of that. He wanted me just to sing in a way which I thought wasn't exciting enough, it didn't have any fire. I said, "Anybody can do that." He said, "That's it! I want you to sing like anybody can do it! And make sure that everybody thinks that they can sing like that." And I didn't understand what he was saying, but about a year later, we had some success with, I think, "Wonderful! Wonderful!"

You have such a unique voice. No one sounds like you.

Johnny Mathis: That's amazing, because I always thought that I sound like everybody else.

In 1957, you made your first appearance on The Ed Sullivan Show. What was that like for a young singer?

Johnny Mathis: I was very fortunate, because Columbia Records and CBS Television were entwined in those days. So whenever I had a record release on Columbia, they would put me on The Ed Sullivan Show, and I would go nationally to the rest of the world, or the rest of the United States. So that's how I became immensely popular very, very early on in my career, because of The Ed Sullivan Show.

You had just turned 22 when you had the number one record in the entire country, "Chances Are." What did that feel like?

Get the Flash Player to see this video. It was the most wonderful feeling in the world, because I had made a couple of friends growing up who were musicians. One was Virgil Gonsalves, and Virgil had a little band, a jazz band, and he would invite me to sing on occasion with the jazz band, and we became really good buddies. So I was happy for him. Also, I was overjoyed for my dad. But that was part of the circumstances that I was involved in at the time. I knew I had made the records, and I knew that they were good records, but I was amazed that they would become popular. I thought just a few people would listen. So I was thrilled for me, but mostly I was thrilled for all of these other people who helped me along the way. My voice teacher, my goodness, what must she think? Here's this kid that she nurtured from the time I was a little kid, and here I was, a big recording star.

Did she ever say she knew you could do it, that she knew this was going to happen with you?

Get the Flash Player to see this video. Johnny Mathis: I made a big faux pas. Because Connie was not only kind to me and gave me voice lessons free of charge, but she also did it with several other entertainers who became very popular. I can't name them right now, but maybe I'll remember a little later. I don't know, I said something to her when I came back to San Francisco and continued my studies, I said something to her about -- I don't know but it must have sounded a little arrogant or something. And she brought me down to earth, and says, "I also have other students who are just as good as you." I was devastated. She liked the fact that I had had success, but she expected it, and she wanted me to be a little more humble. And I thank her for that.

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