Raindrops Keep Fallin' on My Head (Johnny Mathis album)

Last updated
Raindrops Keep Fallin' on My Head
Mathis-Raindrops.jpg
Studio album by
ReleasedFebruary 25, 1970 [1]
RecordedOctober 14, 1969
January 6–7, 1970
January 22, 1970 [2]
Genre Vocal [3]
Length35:28
Label Columbia
Producer Jack Gold [4]
Johnny Mathis chronology
Give Me Your Love for Christmas
(1969)
Raindrops Keep Fallin' on My Head
(1970)
Close to You
(1970)
Professional ratings
Review scores
SourceRating
Allmusic Star full.svgStar full.svgStar full.svgStar half.svgStar empty.svg link
Billboard positive [5]

Raindrops Keep Fallin' on My Head is an album by American pop singer Johnny Mathis that was released on February 25, 1970, by Columbia Records [1] and included several covers of chart hits from the previous year along with 1964's "Watch What Happens" and the 1966 tunes "Alfie" and "A Man and a Woman".

Album collection of recorded music, words, sounds

An album is a collection of audio recordings issued as a collection on compact disc (CD), vinyl, audio tape, or another medium. Albums of recorded music were developed in the early 20th century as individual 78-rpm records collected in a bound book resembling a photograph album; this format evolved after 1948 into single vinyl LP records played at ​33 13 rpm. Vinyl LPs are still issued, though album sales in the 21st-century have mostly focused on CD and MP3 formats. The audio cassette was a format used alongside vinyl from the 1970s into the first decade of the 2000s.

Johnny Mathis American singer

John Royce "Johnny" Mathis is an American singer of popular music. Starting his career with singles of standard music, he became highly popular as an album artist, with several dozen of his albums achieving gold or platinum status and 73 making the Billboard charts to date. According to Guinness Music Chart historian Paul Gambacini, Johnny Mathis has sold well over 360 million records worldwide making Mathis the third biggest selling artist of the 20th century. Mathis has received the Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award and has been inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame for three separate recordings.

Columbia Records American record label; currently owned by Sony Music Entertainment

Columbia Records is an American record label owned by Sony Music Entertainment, a subsidiary of Sony Corporation of America, the North American division of Japanese conglomerate Sony. It was founded in 1887, evolving from the American Graphophone Company, the successor to the Volta Graphophone Company. Columbia is the oldest surviving brand name in the recorded sound business, and the second major company to produce records. From 1961 to 1990, Columbia recordings were released outside North America under the name CBS Records to avoid confusion with EMI's Columbia Graphophone Company. Columbia is one of Sony Music's four flagship record labels, alongside former longtime rival RCA Records, as well as Arista Records and Epic Records.

Contents

The album's producer, Jack Gold, added lyrics to the instrumental theme from "Midnight Cowboy", and it became the first song from the album to be released as a single. While it did manage to reach number 20 on Billboard magazine's Easy Listening chart during the five weeks it spent there that began in the issue dated November 15, 1969, [6] an instrumental version by Ferrante and Teicher had debuted there just two weeks earlier and surpassed the Mathis showing by reaching number two [7] in addition to peaking at number 10 on the magazine's Hot 100. [8] "Odds and Ends" was the second single from this album and had its first appearance on the Easy Listening chart in the March 21, 1970, issue, beginning a three-week run that took the song to number 30. [6] The album itself started a run of 26 weeks on their Top LP's chart just a few issues later and got as high as number 38. [9]

<i>Billboard</i> (magazine) American music magazine

Billboard is an American entertainment media brand owned by the Billboard-Hollywood Reporter Media Group, a division of Eldridge Industries. It publishes pieces involving news, video, opinion, reviews, events, and style, and is also known for its music charts, including the Hot 100 and Billboard 200, tracking the most popular songs and albums in different genres. It also hosts events, owns a publishing firm, and operates several TV shows.

The Adult Contemporary chart is published weekly by Billboard magazine and lists the most popular songs on adult contemporary radio stations in the United States. The chart is compiled based on airplay data submitted to Billboard by stations that are members of the Adult Contemporary radio panel. The chart debuted in Billboard magazine on July 17, 1961. Over the years, the chart has gone under a series of name changes, being called Easy Listening(1961–1962; 1965–1979), Middle-Road Singles(1962–1964), Pop-Standard Singles(1964–1965), Hot Adult Contemporary Tracks(1979–1982) and Adult Contemporary(1983–present).

The Billboard Hot 100 is the music industry standard record chart in the United States for songs, published weekly by Billboard magazine. Chart rankings are based on sales, radio play, and online streaming in the United States.

Raindrops Keep Fallin' on My Head was released for the first time on compact disc in 1995 as one of two albums on one CD, the other LP being the 1971 Mathis title Love Story . [10]

<i>Love Story</i> (Johnny Mathis album) 1971 studio album by Johnny Mathis

Love Story is an album by American pop singer Johnny Mathis that was released on February 10, 1971, by Columbia Records and included a recent Oscar nominee, a flashback to 1967 ("Traces"), a new song by Bacharach & David, a lesser-known one by Goffin & King, and two songs that originated in film scores from 1970 and had lyrics added later: the album closer, "Loss of Love", from Sunflower and the album opener from Love Story, which was subtitled "Where Do I Begin". The norm for Mathis projects from this era was to cover recent hits, and the title track of this one was so recent that the version by Andy Williams began a 13-week run to number nine on Billboard magazine's Hot 100 chart in February 1971, coinciding with the release of this LP.

Reception

Joe Viglione of Allmusic remarked that "Mathis rarely gets credit for the way he can bend and shape notes, obvious on "Something" as well as his reading of "Honey Come Back", Glen Campbell's 1970 hit." [3] He also praised the album as a whole. "The sound with Jack Gold steering the ship is much more restrained than when Percy Faith and Nelson Riddle added their magic to Mathis's voice, but for the time it was just perfect." [3]

Something (Beatles song) original song written and composed by George Harrison

"Something" is a song by the English rock band the Beatles from their 1969 album Abbey Road. It was written by George Harrison, the band's lead guitarist. Soon after the album's release, the song was issued as a single, coupled with "Come Together", making it the first Harrison composition to become a Beatles A-side. Its pairing with "Come Together" was also the first time in the United Kingdom that the Beatles issued a single containing tracks that were already available on an album. The single topped the Billboard Hot 100 in the United States as well as charts in Australia, Canada, New Zealand and West Germany, and peaked at number 4 in the UK.

Honey Come Back (song) 1970 single by Glen Campbell

"Honey Come Back" is a song written by Jimmy Webb and recorded by the American country music artist Glen Campbell. It was released in January 1970 as the second single from his album Try a Little Kindness. The song peaked at number 2 on the Billboard Hot Country Singles chart. It also reached number 1 on the RPM Country Tracks chart in Canada.

Glen Campbell American musician, songwriter, actor

Glen Travis Campbell was an American singer, guitarist, songwriter, television host, and actor. He was best known for a series of hit songs in the 1960s and 1970s, and for hosting a music and comedy variety show called The Glen Campbell Goodtime Hour on CBS television, from January 1969 until June 1972. He released over 70 albums in a career that spanned five decades, selling over 45 million records worldwide, including twelve gold albums, four platinum albums, and one double-platinum album.

Track listing

Side one

  1. "Raindrops Keep Fallin' on My Head" from Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (Burt Bacharach, Hal David) – 2:36
  2. "Honey Come Back" (Jimmy Webb) – 3:02
  3. "Watch What Happens" from The Umbrellas of Cherbourg (Norman Gimbel, Michel Legrand) – 3:20
  4. "Something" (George Harrison) – 2:34
  5. "Alfie" from Alfie (Burt Bacharach, Hal David) – 3:15
  6. "Midnight Cowboy" from Midnight Cowboy (John Barry, Jack Gold) – 2:49

Side two

  1. "A Man and a Woman" from A Man and a Woman (Pierre Barouh, Jerry Keller, Francis Lai) – 3:25
  2. "Odds and Ends" (Burt Bacharach, Hal David) – 3:04
  3. "Jean" from The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie (Rod McKuen) – 3:44
  4. "Everybody's Talkin'" from Midnight Cowboy (Fred Neil) – 3:02
  5. "Bridge over Troubled Water" (Paul Simon, Art Garfunkel) – 4:37

Recording dates

From the liner notes for The Voice of Romance: The Columbia Original Album Collection : [2]

<i>The Voice of Romance: The Columbia Original Album Collection</i> 2017 box set by Johnny Mathis

The Voice of Romance: The Columbia Original Album Collection is a 68-disc box set by American pop singer Johnny Mathis that was released on December 8, 2017, by Legacy Recordings, a division of Sony Music Entertainment. The packaging noted that it includes 67 albums that have been remastered, several of which were being made available on CD for the first time. Two of those, I Love My Lady and The Island, were debuting in their entirety for the first time anywhere, and 38 of the bonus tracks included had also previously gone unreleased.

Personnel

Ernest Aaron Freeman was an American pianist, organist, bandleader, and arranger. He was responsible for arranging many successful rhythm and blues and pop records from the 1950s to the 1970s.

Allan Alfonzo (Al) Capps was an American record producer, arranger, songwriter, multi-instrumentalist, and vocalist. Since the 1960s and 1970s, he has produced and arranged albums for popular artists such as Cher, Andy Williams, Helen Reddy, José Feliciano, Vicki Lawrence, and Liza Minnelli, and has delivered film music for more than twenty films. As a musician he played on albums by The Everly Brothers, Gábor Szabó, and Frank Sinatra. More recently, he has made music for commercials of international brands.

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"Raindrops Keep Fallin' on My Head" is song written by Hal David and Burt Bacharach for the 1969 film Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid.

References

  1. 1 2 (1993) The Music of Johnny Mathis: A Personal Collection by Johnny Mathis [CD booklet]. New York: Columbia Records C4K-48932.
  2. 1 2 (2017) The Voice of Romance: The Columbia Original Album Collection by Johnny Mathis [CD booklet]. New York: Sony Music Entertainment 88985 36892 2.
  3. 1 2 3 "Raindrops Keep Fallin' on My Head – Johnny Mathis". allmusic.com. All Media Network, LLC. Retrieved 21 September 2016.
  4. 1 2 3 4 5 6 (1970) Raindrops Keep Fallin' on My Head by Johnny Mathis [album jacket]. New York: Columbia Records CS 1005.
  5. "Album Reviews". Billboard . 1970-03-13. p. 46.
  6. 1 2 Whitburn 2007 , p. 178.
  7. Whitburn 2007 , p. 94.
  8. Whitburn 2009 , p. 341.
  9. Whitburn 2010 , p. 503.
  10. "Raindrops Keep Fallin' on My Head/Love Story – Johnny Mathis". allmusic.com. All Media Network, LLC. Retrieved 21 September 2016.

Bibliography