Johnny Mathis Sings the Music of Bacharach & Kaempfert

Last updated
Johnny Mathis Sings the Music of Bacharach & Kaempfert
Mathis-Bacharach.jpg
Studio album by
Released1970 [1]
RecordedSides one and two:
October 21–23, 1968 [2] at
Studio Hamburg
Hamburg, Germany [3]
Sides three and four:
1959–1960
1968–1970
Genre
Length64:30
Label Columbia
Producer Jack Gold [5]
Al Ham [6]
Robert Mersey [5]
Mitch Miller [6]
Johnny Mathis chronology
Close to You
(1970)
Johnny Mathis Sings the Music of Bacharach & Kaempfert
(1970)
Love Story
(1971)
Professional ratings
Review scores
SourceRating
Billboard positive [1]
UK Cover Art for single lp version Johnny-Mathis-Sings-The-Music-O-475441.jpg
UK Cover Art for single lp version

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. [1] 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. [7]

Contents

The album made its first appearance on Billboard magazine's Top LP's chart in the issue dated January 23, 1971, and reached number 169 during its seven weeks there. [8]

Sides one and two of Kaempfert songs had already been released in the UK as Johnny Mathis Sings the Music of Bert Kaempfert in November 1969. [2]

Track listing

All tracks on sides one and two were recorded October 21–23, 1968. [2]

Side one

  1. "Wonderland by Night" (Lincoln Chase, Klaus-Gunter Neumann) – 3:34
  2. "Spanish Eyes" (Bert Kaempfert, Charles Singleton, Eddie Snyder) – 3:00
  3. "The Lady Smiles" (Richard Ahlert, Kaempfert, Herbert Rehbein) – 3:06
  4. "Danke Schoen" (Milt Gabler, Kaempfert, Kurt Schwabach) – 2:56
  5. "The Times Will Change" (Kaempfert, Rehbein, Carl Sigman) – 3:09
  6. "Remember When (We Made These Memories)" (Kaempfert, Singleton, Snyder) – 2:58

Side two

  1. "Strangers in the Night" (Kaempfert, Singleton, Snyder) – 3:34
  2. "Don't Stay" (Ahlert, Kaempfert, Rehbein) – 2:51
  3. "If There's a Way" (Kaempfert, Jimmy Radcliffe, Rehbein, Buddy Scott) – 2:55
  4. "Lady" (Kaempfert, Larry Kusik, Rehbein, Singleton) – 3:00
  5. "L-O-V-E" (Gabler, Kaempfert) – 2:30

Side three

  1. "Walk On By" (Burt Bacharach, Hal David) – 3:00
  2. "The Look of Love" from Casino Royale (Bacharach, David) – 3:41
  3. "I Say a Little Prayer" (Bacharach, David) – 2:14
    • above three recorded and released in 1968 for the album Love Is Blue
  4. "Heavenly" (Bacharach, Sidney Shaw) – 3:19
    • rec. and rel. in 1959 for the album Heavenly
  5. "This Guy's in Love with You" (Bacharach, David) – 4:35

Side four

  1. "I'll Never Fall in Love Again" from Promises, Promises (Bacharach, David) – 3:00
  2. "Alfie" from Alfie (Bacharach, David) – 3:13
  3. "Odds and Ends" (Bacharach, David) – 3:02
  4. "Faithfully" (Bacharach, Shaw) – 2:32
  5. "Don't Go Breakin' My Heart" (Bacharach, David) – 2:21
    • rec. and rel. in 1968 for the album Love Is Blue

Bonus track

The 1969 UK LP of Kaempfert songs was released as part of the 2017 box set The Voice of Romance: The Columbia Original Album Collection . [2] Both the UK LP [3] and the box set included a bonus track:

Personnel

Related Research Articles

<i>Moon River: The Very Best of Andy Williams</i> 2009 compilation album by Andy Williams

Moon River: The Very Best of Andy Williams is a compilation album by American pop singer Andy Williams that was released on October 13, 2009. A note from Williams inside the CD booklet explains that the album "was put together to coincide with my memoir Moon River and Me, published by Viking/Penguin. It includes many of the songs that you made hits. I truly appreciate that, and I hope you enjoy the songs we selected for this CD." The collection covers a wide assortment of his material, including crossover hits, stabs at the youth market, a pair of Mancini-Mercer Oscar winners, a Christmas classic, and a eulogy to Robert F. Kennedy.

<i>Born Free</i> (Andy Williams album) 1967 studio album by Andy Williams

Born Free is the twentieth studio album by American pop singer Andy Williams and was released on April 10, 1967, by Columbia Records and includes half a dozen songs associated with movies or musicals. Two of these tracks, however, originated in the scores of the films indicated on the album jacket but had lyrics added later: the melody for "Strangers in the Night" was written for A Man Could Get Killed, and "Somewhere My Love" began as "Lara's Theme" from Doctor Zhivago.

<i>Johnnys Greatest Hits</i> 1958 greatest hits album by Johnny Mathis

Johnny's Greatest Hits is a compilation album by vocalist Johnny Mathis that was released by Columbia Records on March 17, 1958, and has been described as the "original greatest-hits package". The LP collected all but one of the songs from the first six singles he recorded, including eight A- and B-sides that made the singles charts in The Billboard as well as three B-sides that did not chart and one new track that was co-written by Mathis but not released as a single.

<i>More Johnnys Greatest Hits</i> 1959 compilation album by Johnny Mathis

More Johnny's Greatest Hits is a compilation album by Johnny Mathis that was released by Columbia Records on June 22, 1959, and contains the A- and B-sides of five of his singles as well as "Teacher, Teacher", the chart hit that was the B-side of the Johnny's Greatest Hits track "All the Time", and "The Flame of Love," which had not been released before.

<i>Heavenly</i> (Johnny Mathis album) 1959 studio album by Johnny Mathis

Heavenly is an album by American pop singer Johnny Mathis that was released on August 10, 1959, by Columbia Records and marked his return to recording ballads with orchestral accompaniment. Along with the material that others had covered before are two new songs: the title track and "I'll Be Easy to Find".

<i>Faithfully</i> (Johnny Mathis album) 1959 studio album by Johnny Mathis

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.

<i>Portrait of Johnny</i> 1961 greatest hits album by Johnny Mathis

Portrait of Johnny is a compilation album by Johnny Mathis that was released by Columbia Records on July 17, 1961, and described on the cover as "The Third in the Johnny Mathis Greatest Hits Series". Seven B-sides of chart hits are included along with four of the corresponding A-sides that made it onto the Billboard Hot 100 or "bubbled under" it and one song from a single that had neither side chart in Billboard magazine.

<i>Ill Search My Heart and Other Great Hits</i> 1964 greatest hits album by Johnny Mathis

I'll Search My Heart and Other Great Hits is a compilation album by American pop singer Johnny Mathis that was released by Columbia Records in April 1964 and gathered up five A-sides that reached the Billboard Hot 100, a corresponding B-side, and six songs that had previously been unreleased.

<i>The Great Years</i> 1964 greatest hits album by Johnny Mathis

The Great Years is a compilation album by American pop singer Johnny Mathis that was released by Columbia Records in July 1964. Billboard magazine described the two-LP set, which included chart hits and album tracks, as "the best of Mathis".

<i>Johnny Mathis Sings</i> 1967 studio album by Johnny Mathis

Johnny Mathis Sings is an album by American pop singer Johnny Mathis that was released by Mercury Records on March 10, 1967 and was the last of his 11 studio projects for the label. Eight of the twelve tracks were recorded since the completion of his previous LP, So Nice, while four of the tracks were leftovers from the recording sessions for previous Mercury albums. The finished product included a number from Broadway's The Roar of the Greasepaint—the Smell of the Crowd, a cover of the Beatles hit "Eleanor Rigby", two offerings from songwriters Burt Bacharach and Hal David, and three cuts that originated in film scores but had lyrics added later: the melody for "Strangers in the Night" was written for A Man Could Get Killed; "Somewhere My Love" began as "Lara's Theme" from Doctor Zhivago; and "Lovers in New York" started out as the instrumental title track from Breakfast at Tiffany's.

<i>Love Is Blue</i> (Johnny Mathis album) 1968 studio album by Johnny Mathis

Love Is Blue is an album by American pop singer Johnny Mathis that was released on March 6, 1968, by Columbia Records and adhered even more strictly to the concept of the "cover" album of recent hits than its predecessor in that five of the 10 songs selected for the project were chart hits for the original artists within the previous year and another three had charted within the previous decade. Even the two remaining selections that did not bring chart success to the original artists were by the hit songwriting teams of Burt Bacharach and Hal David and John Lennon and Paul McCartney and left no room for the usual inclusion of some original songs or material from Broadway.

<i>Those Were the Days</i> (Johnny Mathis album) 1968 studio album by Johnny Mathis

Those Were the Days is an album by American pop singer Johnny Mathis that was released on November 6, 1968, by Columbia Records. It followed the formula of including covers of recent hit songs, the oldest, in this case, being "The End of the World", which hadn't been on the charts since 1963. Two of the 10 tracks, however, had not been released as singles by other artists: "Every Time I Dream of You", which had appeared as an instrumental on Bert Kaempfert's 1967 album Love That Bert Kaempfert, and "You Make Me Think About You", which was first heard in the 1968 film With Six You Get Eggroll.

<i>People</i> (Johnny Mathis album) 1969 greatest hits album by Johnny Mathis

People is a compilation album by American pop singer Johnny Mathis that was released in the summer of 1969 by Columbia Records at the same time as another Mathis compilation, The Impossible Dream. Both releases include ten tracks from albums that he recorded during his time with Mercury Records between 1963 and 1967.

<i>The Impossible Dream</i> (Johnny Mathis album) 1969 compilation album by Johnny Mathis

The Impossible Dream is a compilation album by American pop singer Johnny Mathis that was released in the summer of 1969 by Columbia Records at the same time as another Mathis compilation, People. Both releases include ten tracks from albums that he recorded during his time with Mercury Records between 1963 and 1967.

<i>Raindrops Keep Fallin on My Head</i> (Johnny Mathis album) 1970 studio album by Johnny Mathis

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 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".

<i>Johnny Mathis All-Time Greatest Hits</i> 1972 compilation album by Johnny Mathis

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.

<i>The First 25 Years – The Silver Anniversary Album</i> 1981 compilation album by Johnny Mathis

The First 25 Years – The Silver Anniversary Album is a compilation album by American pop singer Johnny Mathis that was released in 1981 by Columbia Records. The back cover of the album notes that there are four new tracks. A cover of the Commodores hit "Three Times a Lady" had been released on the UK version of his 1980 album Different Kinda Different, which was retitled All for You, but the Mathis rendition of the song makes its US debut here.

"Remember When " is a song written by Bert Kaempfert, Charles Singleton and Eddie Snyder, and performed by Wayne Newton. It reached #15 on the U.S. adult contemporary chart and #69 on the Billboard Hot 100 in 1965. It was featured on his 1966 album, Wayne Newton...Now!

<i>The Singles</i> (Johnny Mathis album) 2015 box set by Johnny Mathis

The Singles is a four-disc box set by the American pop singer Johnny Mathis that was released in 2015 by Columbia Records to commemorate the singer's 80th birthday. In his review of the collection Joe Marchese explains that it "doesn't bring together every track released by the legendary artist on 45 RPM; such an endeavor would take far more than four discs. Instead, it features the tracks originally released by Mathis on Columbia in the singles format – in other words, non-LP sides – between the years of 1956 and 1981, in their original single mixes." His description of the compilation echoes that of the compilation's producer Didier C. Deutsch in the liner notes as explanation for the exclusion of the hit singles "Misty" from Heavenly (1959) and his "Too Much, Too Little, Too Late" duet with Deniece Williams from You Light Up My Life (1978). Deutsch excuses these as "songs extracted from specific albums to call attention to these albums." The set does, however, include "Ten Times Forever More" and "I Was There" from his 1971 LP, Love Story, and a shorter version of "If We Only Have Love" than the one that was included on his other 1971 album, You've Got a Friend.

<i>Johnny Mathis Sings the Great Songs</i> 1974 compilation album by Johnny Mathis

Johnny Mathis Sings the Great Songs is a compilation album by American pop singer Johnny Mathis that was released in the UK by CBS Records on September 13, 1974.

References

  1. 1 2 3 "Album Reviews". Billboard . 1970-12-05. p. 63.
  2. 1 2 3 4 (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 4 (1969) Johnny Mathis Sings the Music of Bert Kaempfert by Johnny Mathis [album jacket]. London: CBS Records S 63524.
  4. "Sings the Music of Bacharach & Kaempfert - Johnny Mathis". allmusic.com. All Media Network, LLC. Retrieved 29 September 2016.
  5. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 (1970) Johnny Mathis Sings the Music of Bacharach & Kaempfert by Johnny Mathis [album jacket]. New York: Columbia Records CG 30350.
  6. 1 2 3 4 (1993) The Music of Johnny Mathis: A Personal Collection by Johnny Mathis [CD booklet]. New York: Columbia Records C4K-48932.
  7. Whitburn 2007 , p. 194.
  8. Whitburn 2010 , p. 503.
  9. 1 2 (1968) Love Is Blue by Johnny Mathis [album jacket]. New York: Columbia Records CS 9637.
  10. 1 2 (1970) Raindrops Keep Fallin' on My Head by Johnny Mathis [album jacket]. New York: Columbia Records CS 1005.
  11. (1969) Love Theme from "Romeo and Juliet" (A Time for Us) by Johnny Mathis [album jacket]. New York: Columbia Records CS 9909.
  12. (1968) Those Were the Days by Johnny Mathis [album jacket]. New York: Columbia Records CS 9705.

Bibliography