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.
Live It Up! is an album by American pop singer Johnny Mathis that was released on December 11, 1961, by Columbia Records and was the second of two album collaborations with arranger and conductor Nelson Riddle. The singer again eschewed ballads as he had on Swing Softly and selected a balance of new and established material.
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.
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 First Time Ever (I Saw Your Face) is an album by American pop singer Johnny Mathis released on May 10, 1972, by Columbia Records and continues in the tradition set by his recent studio releases of covering mostly current chart hits. A trio of selections on side one ("Love Theme from 'The Godfather' (Speak Softly Love)", "Theme from 'Summer of 42' (The Summer Knows)", and "Brian's Song (The Hands of Time)") originated as film scores and had lyrics added later.
Me and Mrs. Jones is an album by American pop singer Johnny Mathis that was released in January 1973 by Columbia Records. While it does cover several big chart hits of the day like his last album, Song Sung Blue, did, it also includes songs that didn't make the US Top 40 or had never charted.
I'm Coming Home is an album by American pop singer Johnny Mathis that was released on September 21, 1973, by Columbia Records and was mainly composed of material written by the songwriting team of its producer, Thom Bell, and Linda Creed. Unlike several of the Mathis albums before it, I'm Coming Home relied primarily on new songs and included only two covers of established chart hits, both of which were by The Stylistics.
When Will I See You Again is an album by American pop singer Johnny Mathis that was released in March 1975 by Columbia Records and was again predominantly composed of covers of recent hit songs by other artists.
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.
Just for the Record... is a box set by American singer Barbra Streisand. It was released by Columbia Records on September 24, 1991. Streisand and her manager, Martin Erlichman, were credited as the album's executive producers. Just for the Record... includes a variety of performances throughout Streisand's career, including a song taken from her first studio recording session in 1955: a cover of "You'll Never Know". Other tracks were compiled from various live performances, TV specials, and previous albums from her back catalog.
Hold Me, Thrill Me, Kiss Me is an album by American pop singer Johnny Mathis that was released on August 15, 1977, by Columbia Records and found him firmly planted in the cover album genre once again in that no original songs were included. Allmusic's Joe Viglione did feel, however, that "they seem to be trying to cover all the bases here," meaning that it had a variety of selections, including a standard from 1939, a hit that charted in both the 1950s and '60s, a country crossover, and recent offerings from stage and screen.
I Love My Lady is an album by American pop singer Johnny Mathis that was completed in 1981 but not released in its entirety until December 8, 2017, when it was included in the box set The Voice of Romance: The Columbia Original Album Collection. It was written and produced by Chic founders Bernard Edwards and Nile Rodgers and represented an attempt at shifting away from the easy listening style of music that Mathis had been recording for 25 years to the more contemporary sound of the team behind "Le Freak" and "We Are Family".
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 the Still of the Night is an album by American pop singer Johnny Mathis that was released on August 8, 1989, by Columbia Records and continues the trend that began with his 1986 collaboration with Henry Mancini, The Hollywood Musicals, in that the project is devoted to a specific theme that ties the songs together. Mathis hints at the theme for this album in the liner notes for his 1993 box set The Music of Johnny Mathis: A Personal Collection, where he gives his thoughts on the 1964 Little Anthony and the Imperials song "I'm on the Outside Looking In" that he covered for his 1988 album Once in a While: "That was group singers' kind of material. I was singing other stuff. It wasn't the picture of the lone crooner standing in the spotlight. That's what I was doing when all this other stuff was going on. I never listened to it until it was brought to my attention by [that album's producers] Peter Bunetta and Rick Chudacoff." Mathis chose to continue his work with Bunetta and Chudacoff on this project, which focuses on "this other stuff" that Mathis refers to: pop and R&B hits from the 1950s and 1960s.
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 Music of Johnny Mathis: A Personal Collection is a box set by American pop singer Johnny Mathis that was released in 1993 by Columbia Records and gave an overview of his career with four CDs containing 86 tracks that he selected himself. In the liner notes he wrote that his "undying gratitude is really to the lyricists and composers of all these memorable songs. Without the words and music I have sung over the years, my career as a singer would not have existed. My thanks is always to these special and gifted people."
The Complete Global Albums Collection is a 13-disc box set by American pop singer Johnny Mathis that was released in 2014 by Legacy Recordings. It includes the 11 studio albums recorded by Mathis's own production company, Global Records, and originally distributed by Mercury Records between 1963 and 1966, as well as 31 additional tracks, 16 of which were being made available for the first time.
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.
"Guava Jelly" is a song recorded by the Jamaican group Bob Marley and the Wailers. It was released as a 7" vinyl single through Tuff Gong and Green Door Records. It was issued commercially with B-side track "Redder Then Red", which was misspelled on its initial printing, in 1971. It was written and produced by Marley and features uncredited lyrical contributions from Bunny Livingston. A reggae composition like the majority of Marley's works, "Guava Jelly" contains a rocksteady and island-like production with lyrics loosely based around sexual intercourse. His use of the term "guava jelly" was likely referring to a specific type of sexual lubricant. It was favorably viewed by several reviewers, with many of them finding the composition to be sexual and about love. The group placed "Guava Jelly" on several compilation albums, including Africa Unite: The Singles Collection in 2005, and Owen Gray and Herbie Mann created their own versions in 1974 and 1975, respectively.
The Island is an album by American pop singer Johnny Mathis that was completed for Columbia Records in 1989 but not released in its entirety by parent corporation Sony Music Entertainment until December 8, 2017, when it was included in the Mathis box set The Voice of Romance: The Columbia Original Album Collection. The liner notes for the box set indicate that all of the songs for this album were recorded on August 18, 1989.
