Merry Christmas is the first Christmas album by American pop singer Johnny Mathis and was released by Columbia Records on October 6, 1958. The selections are a mix of traditional Christmas carols and holiday hits.
Cool Yule is a holiday album by Bette Midler released on October 10, 2006, through Columbia Records. Midler's first seasonal release, the album features many standard Christmas tunes as well as a reworking edition of her Grammy-winning hit "From a Distance".
The Christmas Album was the fourteenth album by The Manhattan Transfer, released in 1992 on Columbia Records.
Sounds of Christmas is the second holiday-themed album by vocalist Johnny Mathis and the first of his 11 studio projects for Mercury Records. His first yuletide effort, 1958's Merry Christmas, relied heavily on popular holiday carols and standards, but this 1963 release also included two new songs as well as covers of some lesser-known recordings by Andy Williams and Bing Crosby.
That's What Friends Are For is an album by American singers Johnny Mathis and Deniece Williams that was released in July 1978 by Columbia Records. The project was a continuation of the pairing of the artists that began on his previous LP, You Light Up My Life, which included "Too Much, Too Little, Too Late", the duet that was on its way to number one on three different charts in Billboard magazine as the recording sessions for this album got underway.
Up, Up And Away is an album by American pop singer Johnny Mathis that was released on October 23, 1967, and was the first LP he recorded upon returning to his first record label, Columbia Records, where he then stayed for several decades after having just completed a four-year sojourn with Mercury Records. The title track starts the album on the contemporary end of the spectrum of material covered here, but Mathis also includes a standard from the 1940s, a hit that charted twice for the same artist in the 1950s, a trio of songs from Doctor Dolittle, and two songs that had lyrics added after originating as instrumentals: "Drifting" began as part of the score to the 1958 film Auntie Mame, and "Far Above Cayuga's Waters" was "a theme song of Cornell University before saxophonist Dave Pell retooled it and Sammy Cahn adapted the delightful fairytale-like lyrics."
Give Me Your Love for Christmas is the third Christmas album by American pop singer Johnny Mathis and was released by Columbia Records on October 13, 1969. The oldest song selected for this project was the 1934 classic "Santa Claus Is Coming to Town", which meant there were not the traditional hymns that could be found on his previous Christmas outings. He did, however, cover several other contemporary Christmas favorites along with a few new and lesser-known songs, such as the title track, which was a reworking of an unreleased recording of his from 1961, and "Christmas Day", which came from the then-current Broadway musical Promises, Promises. New versions of "Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas" and "The Little Drummer Boy", which he also recorded in 1963 for his previous Christmas LP, Sounds of Christmas, made the final track list here as well.
Johnny Mathis Sings the Music of Bacharach & Kaempfert is an album by American pop singer Johnny Mathis that was released in the fall of 1970 by Columbia Records. While one half of the two-record set was a compilation of tracks from his previous albums that were composed by Burt Bacharach, the other consisted of new recordings of songs composed by Bert Kaempfert, including a new version of "Strangers in the Night", which Mathis had already recorded in 1966 for his LP Johnny Mathis Sings. Although the Kaempfert tribute was similar to recent Mathis albums in that he was mainly covering songs made popular by other singers, it was absent of hits from the 12 months previous to its release that had become the pattern of his output at this point. The latest US chartings of any of the Kaempfert compositions as of this album's debut came from 1967 recordings of "Lady" by Jack Jones and "The Lady Smiles" by Matt Monro.
The MGM Album is a 1989 album by American vocalist Michael Feinstein of songs from Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer films. The album is arranged by Ian Bernard and Larry Wilcox.
I Still Believe in Santa Claus is a Christmas album by American pop singer Andy Williams that was released by Curb Records in 1990. It was his fourth solo album of Christmas music, following The Andy Williams Christmas Album (1963), Merry Christmas (1965) and Christmas Present (1974). As with the 1965 LP, this album focuses exclusively on 20th-century compositions, including two new songs: "Christmas Needs Love to Be Christmas" and "My Christmas Vow ", the latter of which Williams describes in the liner notes as "a new lyric set to an old Hawaiian melody".
"The Christmas Waltz" is a Christmas song written by Sammy Cahn and Jule Styne for Frank Sinatra, who recorded it in 1954 as the B-side of a new recording of "White Christmas", in 1957 for his album A Jolly Christmas from Frank Sinatra, and in 1968 for The Sinatra Family Wish You a Merry Christmas.
Johnny Mathis' All-Time Greatest Hits is a compilation album by American pop singer Johnny Mathis that was released in the spring of 1972 by Columbia Records and, despite its title, overlooks a good number of his Top 40 hits in favor of his singles that did not make the Billboard Hot 100 and album tracks that were not released as singles.
Friends in Love is an album by American pop singer Johnny Mathis that was released on April 5, 1982, by Columbia Records and included six original songs, two of which were duets with Dionne Warwick.
The Christmas Album is the fifth Christmas album by American pop singer Johnny Mathis that was released on October 15, 2002, by Columbia Records and included his first recordings of three traditional carols, three new songs, and a handful of 20th-century offerings.
The Classic Christmas Album is a Christmas compilation album by American pop singer Johnny Mathis that was released on October 7, 2014, by Columbia Records and includes two 1961 recordings that were previously unavailable: "Ol' Kris Kringle" and the original version of the title track from his 1969 Christmas album Give Me Your Love for Christmas. Three other songs make their debut on compact disc as of this release, and two other non-album singles can be counted among the rarities here. The collection also includes a selection or two from several of Mathis's Christmas studio albums—"Sleigh Ride" from Merry Christmas, "Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas" from Sounds of Christmas, "Calypso Noel" from Give Me Your Love for Christmas, "The Christmas Waltz" and "It's Beginning to Look a Lot Like Christmas" from Christmas Eve with Johnny Mathis, and "Home for the Holidays" from Sending You a Little Christmas—as well as his duet with Bette Midler from her 2006 holiday album Cool Yule, which was a medley of "Winter Wonderland" and "Let It Snow! Let It Snow! Let It Snow!".
16 Most Requested Songs is a compilation album by American pop singer Johnny Mathis that was released in 1986 by Columbia Records and features 12 tracks representing his time with the label from 1956 to 1963, including his Billboard top 10 hits "Chances Are", "It's Not for Me to Say", "The Twelfth of Never", "Gina", and "What Will Mary Say" as well as his signature song, "Misty". The remaining four selections were recorded with Columbia between 1969 and 1977.
The Christmas Music of Johnny Mathis: A Personal Collection is a compilation album by American pop singer Johnny Mathis that was released in October 1993 by Columbia Records and included selections from the four Christmas albums that he had recorded to date: Merry Christmas, Sounds of Christmas, Give Me Your Love for Christmas, and Christmas Eve with Johnny Mathis.
Gold: A 50th Anniversary Christmas Celebration is a compilation album by American pop singer Johnny Mathis that was released on September 19, 2006, by Columbia Records and Legacy Recordings. It includes selections from four of the first five Christmas albums that he had recorded: Merry Christmas, Sounds of Christmas, Christmas Eve with Johnny Mathis, and The Christmas Album. Two tracks that were recorded with other artists are also included: "O Tannenbaum", which comes from Mannheim Steamroller's 2001 album Christmas Extraordinaire, and a medley duet of "Winter Wonderland" and "Let It Snow! Let It Snow! Let It Snow!" with Bette Midler from her 2006 holiday album Cool Yule.
Johnny Mathis has recorded 73 studio albums, 18 of which achieved sales of 500,000 units and were awarded Gold certification by the Recording Industry Association of America. Five of his greatest hits albums also accomplished this, and of these 18 Gold albums, six eventually went Platinum by reaching sales of one million copies. In 1999, sales figures totaled five million for his first holiday LP, Merry Christmas, and three million for Johnny's Greatest Hits, a 1958 collection that has been described as the "original greatest-hits package" and once held the record for most weeks on Billboard magazine's album chart with a total of 490. His second longest album chart run was the 295 weeks belonging to his Platinum 1959 album Heavenly, which gave him five weeks in the top spot. In a ranking of the top album artists of the last half of the 1950s in terms of Billboard chart performance, he comes in at number two, for the 1960s, number 10, and for the period from 1955 to 2009 he is at number six.
The Complete Christmas Collection 1958–2010 is a three-disc box set by American pop singer Johnny Mathis that was released in 2015 by Real Gone Music under license from Columbia Records. The set includes Mathis's five holiday albums from the period in their entirety: Merry Christmas, Sounds of Christmas, Give Me Your Love for Christmas, Christmas Eve with Johnny Mathis, and The Christmas Album. It also compiles all of Mathis's holiday songs that were only released as singles, as well as thematically-appropriate tracks from his non-holiday albums: "When a Child Is Born" from I Only Have Eyes for You, the holiday version of "What a Wonderful World" from Let It Be Me, and his two recordings of "Ave Maria" from Good Night, Dear Lord, which bookend the set.
