John Royce 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. Mathis has received the Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award and has been inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame for three recordings.
"Hallelujah" is a song written by Canadian singer Leonard Cohen, originally released on his album Various Positions (1984). Achieving little initial success, the song found greater popular acclaim through a new version recorded by John Cale in 1991, which inspired a recording of Cale's version by Jeff Buckley in 1994.
Bette Midler Sings the Rosemary Clooney Songbook is an album by the American singer Bette Midler. It was produced by Barry Manilow and marked the first time that Midler had worked with Manilow in more than twenty years. It was also Midler's first album for Columbia Records after nearly 30 years recording for Warner Music Group. Columbia Records is owned by Sony Music Entertainment.
"Strike Up the Band" is a 1927 song composed by George Gershwin, with lyrics by Ira Gershwin with the collaboration of Millie Raush. It was written for the 1927 musical Strike Up the Band, where it formed part of a satire on war and militaristic music. Although the musical was not successful, the instrumental version of the song, titled the "March from Strike Up the Band", has become quite well known. The song was also used in the Judy Garland-Mickey Rooney 1940 film Strike Up the Band.
Pleasures U Like is the third studio album by Jon B. It's his first album under Tracey Edmonds' new label Edmonds Record Group. Edmonds formed the new label after Jon's previous label home Yab Yum Records folded. On Pleasures U Like, Jon reunites with past producers Babyface and Tim Kelley and Bob Robinson, who each produce one song. Also present on the album is the team of Joshua P. Thompson, a songwriter and producer and singer/songwriter/producer Quincy Patrick who is best known for their work with the R&B singer Joe.
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.
Moon River and Other Great Movie Themes is the ninth studio album by American pop singer Andy Williams and was released on March 26, 1962 by Columbia Records and covered film songs that were mostly from the previous decade.
Wonderful, Wonderful is the second album by American pop singer Johnny Mathis. It was released on July 8, 1957, on the Columbia Records label but does not include his hit song of the same name or any of his songs that were released as singles that year. The liner notes on the back of the original album cover proclaim that "he stamps as his very own such familiar rhythm tunes as 'Too Close for Comfort' and 'That Old Black Magic', injects new life in well-known ballads such as 'All Through the Night', gives new hearings to several fine standards that have been neglected in recent years, and even introduces a brand new ballad ."
Open Fire, Two Guitars is an album by American pop singer Johnny Mathis that was released on January 5, 1959, by Columbia Records on which he opts for guitar and bass accompaniment instead of performing alongside an orchestra. Two new songs are mixed in with covers of popular standards.
Faithfully is an album by American pop singer Johnny Mathis that was released on December 21, 1959, by Columbia Records and continues his trend toward covering ballads alongside an orchestra. While his previous LPs usually offered one or two songs that had not been previously recorded, that number on this project leaped to five, and although the other seven selections were established by other artists, even some of those were lesser-known, such as Jeri Southern's number 30 pop hit "You Better Go Now" and the title song from the 1953 film The Blue Gardenia.
Romantically is an album by American pop singer Johnny Mathis that was released on November 18, 1963, by Columbia Records and was also the final original studio album recorded by Mathis for the label prior to his moving to Mercury Records. Mathis had recorded exclusively for Columbia from 1956 to 1963. After a brief stint with Mercury, he returned to Columbia in 1967. His first Mercury project, Sounds of Christmas, was actually released six weeks before this one, on October 4.
Tender Is the Night is an album by American pop singer Johnny Mathis that was released by Mercury Records on January 23, 1964 and included selections from stage and screen as well as two new songs from "Fly Me to the Moon" composer Bart Howard.
The Wonderful World of Make Believe is an album by American pop singer Johnny Mathis that was released by Mercury Records on July 10, 1964, and described by Greg Adams of Allmusic, who wrote, "The theme is fantasy, from imaginary locations to fanciful yearnings to vague, idealized realms ."
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.
Killing Me Softly with Her Song is an album by American pop singer Johnny Mathis that was released on May 25, 1973 by Columbia Records and leaned heavily on covers of the latest radio favorites.
Mathis Is... is an album by American pop singer Johnny Mathis that was released on February 21, 1977, by Columbia Records and reunites the singer with producer Thom Bell for the first time since their collaboration on I'm Coming Home in 1973. As with that project, Mathis Is... focuses primarily on new songs, the one exception being a cover of "Sweet Love of Mine" from the 1975 Pick of the Litter album by The Spinners.
The Hollywood Musicals is an album by American pop singer Johnny Mathis and American composer/conductor Henry Mancini that was released on October 17, 1986, by Columbia Records. This project heralded Mathis's return to the genre of traditional pop, which he would revisit occasionally over the next few decades.
In a Sentimental Mood: Mathis Sings Ellington is an album by American pop singer Johnny Mathis that was released on October 9, 1990, by Columbia Records and continues the studio album pattern that began with The Hollywood Musicals and In the Still of the Night in which the song selections adhere to a specific theme or focus.
Isn't It Romantic: The Standards Album is an album by the American pop singer Johnny Mathis that was released on February 1, 2005, by Columbia Records. In an interview that year with NPR's Ed Gordon, the singer describes a conversation he had with record company executives: "They said, 'We want you to sing the most popular songs from the American musical theater that you haven't sung in the past.'... I sat down and finally came up with a list of nine songs that I hadn't recorded that were very familiar to the public."
Paul Boutin is a French-born American music mixer, audio engineer and a long-time collaborator with producer/songwriter/artist Kenneth "Babyface" Edmonds.
