The first time I became aware of Johnny Mathis was when he hit the charts in 1957. And, naturally there was a young lady who helped me in my new awareness. Her name was Sally Stanley and she lived in Monterey, California. I was in Monterey for a DeMoley convention, an organization I had joined only with the intent of attending the gathering and getting out of school for a week. The folks running things had established a dating bureau for all of we swell DeMoley's who had descended upon the town like the birds in Hitchcock's classic film. I ended up with a name card giving me scant information about the young lady who had signed up to meet we dashing young studs. The card told me very little about the girl...her name was Sally Stanley, she was 14 years old and was 4' 11 in height. Perfect for my teenage tastes. We met, saw a movie, I got my first serious kiss and copped a feel for the first time, as well, and became part of Sally's life for the next few years. After I'd returned home I received a letter (one of many) from Sally (what a doll) and she wrote that she'd selected a song played by the local DJ, Frantic Fred, to be our song. The song was Chances Are by Johnny Mathis. Now at that time in my life I was listening to nothing but the sounds of the big bands and West Coast jazz. However, not to let down my little bundle of heaven in Monterey, I bought a copy of Chances Are. From my first real listening to that record I knew that Mr. Mathis was a wonderful singer but was too popular sounding for my sophisticated ears. Little did I know that this same Johnny Mathis would become one of my all-time favorite singers and that he and his songs would play important parts in my life forevermore. Johnny Mathis, to my mind, is one of the most under-rated singers of the past forty years. His range, his _style_, his very sound are truly without equal. To say that Mr. Mathis belongs in the musical pantheon alongside the likes of Frank Sinatra, Mel Torme, and Tony Bennett would perhaps surprise some music fans and yet I have no problem in placing Johnny's face alongside that of the aforementioned musical masters. Mathis has, over an exceptional career, recorded over 160 albums, performed in nightclubs from Las Vegas to Atlantic City, stylyized his songs before several Presidents, been honored with a Command Performance by the Royal Family of Great Britian, appeared on the Tonight Show over 50 times and has sung his song on virtually every variety show to ever appear on television since 1957. But to leave it at that would be a diservice to Mr. Mathis. I first realized that something more than mere pop music throw-aways was happenng upon my first listening to John's simply wonderful album Open Fire, Two Guitars. Not many artists can say that an album recorded in the 1950s is still available and in print today as is the case with Open Fire, Two Guitars. A single listening to his rendition of I'll Be Seeing You is enough to make a Mathis fan out of the most hardcore fan of any other genre of music. Johnny has, quietly and steadily, recorded almost all of the Great American Songbook, as I like to call the classic songs of the past 60 years or so. songs such as Moonlight Becomes You, Tenderly, Embraceable You, April in Paris, and hundreds more. He's done the classic Broadway show tunes, the movie themes, in other words, he's covered all the _base_s. Johnny Mathis started out to be an opera singer but fortunately for us, was sidetracked along the way. He was an athlete of a magnitude few of us could ever attain. At San Francisco State University he set records in various track and field events and, in fact, actually turned down a place on the United States Olympic Track and Field Team so that he could record his first record album for Columbia Records. Some people have a knack for being in the right place at the right time and Johnny had that knack, at least, upon first landing at Columbia. He was taken under the wing of George Avakian, a lengendary producer of recordings, and teamed with three of the greatest arranger-conductors of all time. For his first recordings, he was fortunate to be working with the likes of Gil Evans (who should need no introduction to music fans), John Lewis (of Modern Jazz Quartet fame), and Teo Macero (who gained renown for producing Miles Davis and Charles Mingus among hundreds of others). Those first recordings were collected into an album, Johnny's Greatest Hits, which stayed on the Billboard Hot 100 charts for decades and also remains available today. It seems that Johnny Mathis has always been with us. Whether singing the theme song from The Great Race, better known as The Sweetheart Tree or being piped into department stores or your dentist's office singing Misty. How many of us have fallen in love listening to the voice of Johnny Mathis? Or, perhaps a better way to phrase that would be, how many of us fell in love with the voice of Johnny playing in the background? Johnny has recorded the songs of all the great composers, from Rogers and Hart, to Cole Porter, to Lerner and Lowe, to Lennon and McCartney I wonder how he finds new material today and yet he does. Speaking of material, we can't overlook one of the seminal popular songs of all-time.  In the summer of 1959 my late father, and I, were returning home, to Orange County, California, when we stopped for a late night Orange Julius (remember those? Man!   Yes, please and be sure and put the egg in it.  It was located on West Broadway, downtown San Diego, and the only seating was on round stools, covered in red, at the counter.  A record began on the  juke-box and a man at the counter (who'd obviously had a few too many...not Julius') with a terrific voice, began singing along.  My dad, looked at me and said:   Who IS that?  I knew he didn't mean the drunk.  I told him the record was a new hit for Johnny Mathis called MIsty.  It's three minutes frozen in my memory forever.  My dad had found a new singer and we both realized that this was a classic song in a generation not remembered for it's great classic songs. The compser?  None other than the fabulous Mr. Erroll Garner, the great jazz pianist.   Misty.  Not much need be said. I still shiver when I hear Johnny enter the last chorus with the high note:   ...oooOOON my own... . A moment of musical magic if ever there was one.  Thanks Johnny AND Erroll.  (If you'd like to treat yourself to a sound investment buy a copy of Erroll's classic album Other Voices and hear the instrumental version that came first.  Wow!). Some five years ago, John recorded an absolutely heart-stopping duet of Chances Are with Liza Minnelli. One listen and the goose bumps rise on the backs of your forearms like the roses on the stems in your Aunt Gertrude's rose garden. It's breathtaking. My favorite Mathis album? That's a tough call to make, but I'll have to go with the aforementioned Open Fire, Two Guitars. I wore out three copies of the LP and now have the CD safely locked away in my collection of digital do-overs. A close second is an album recorded in Las Vegas, in 1972, live before a highly appreciative crowd, with full concert orchestra and a marvel to listen to. Johnny Mathis in Person is a two LP set that has never made it's way to CD and is among the forgotten classics of our past century. I recently found a near mint copy in Quadraphonic on eBay. Remember Quad? It went the way of the dodo bird but the album sounds marvelous in stereo. From the first selection, In the Morning (of My Life) through a greatest hits medley, that's guaranteed to have you running for your old school yearbook, to side four, it carries the knockout punch of any heavyweight fight in Vegas. A few words about side four, especially the last two tracks of the album. Johnny does a show-stopping version of the song Maria from Leonard Bernstein's West Side Story, that would have been the perfect closer for even one of our better vocalists. But, Mr. Mathis chose to close that show, and that album with one of the musical highlights of my life and I like to think yours if you can find a copy and just listen. A chord from the orchestra, and Johnny says, rather matter of factly, Some of the poetry of Jacques Brel. Two, maybe three people in the audience applaud at the mention of Mr. Brel's name. Pity. A great poet, songwriter and performer. One of the best as is this rousing anthem that closed the off-Broadway production of Jacques Brel is Alive and Well and Living in Paris. Johnny Mathis takes this song and puts his own indelible stamp on it for all time. if We Only Have Love is the song and John's voice, the orchestra, the arrangement and Brel's lyrics take us to another land...another time...another place. The song begins softly.... If we only had love, then tomorrow will dawn, and the days of our years will rise on that morn... to the rousing, thundering final words: We'll conquer all time...all space...the sun and the stars. At each listening I am reduced to a lump of geliten in front of my stereo speakers. Without question, one of the most perfect matchings of singer and song in the long history of music. My favorite Mathis song though, and I suspect shall always be Never, Never Land from the Broadway production of Peter Pan. It was released on an unheralded album in the 1950s called simpy Johnny, but to this day remains the most inspired interpretation of one of the most under performed songs ever written. A couple of years ago, I asked a friend to listen to Johnny's recording of Never, Never Land and was very pleasantly surprised at his reaction. As the final strains of ...Never, ever, land faded into the corners of the room my friend remarked: Great song, but you didn't tell me it was a tour de force for Mathis. And that it is. It's a very hard album to find, not in print and never on CD but well worth the effort to locate. Johnny Mathis didn't stop there. He went on to record songs by everyone but your Uncle Fred. Then about ten years ago he recorded a masterful CD called In a Sentimental Mood, a salute to the musical genius of Edward Kennedy Ellington, known better in some circles as Duke. John tackles such incredibly difficult songs as Billy Strayhorn's Lush Life, Duke's Solitude, Don't Get Around Much Anymore, and Daydream, among several others. Many outstanding singer's of our time have shyed away from such material as it's not easy to sing over such chord changes. Johnny Mathis handles all the material with an artistry that ranks him with the God's of American Popular Music. He acquits himself in a manner not unbefitting Frank, Tony, Mel or Sammy. (Sammy Davis, Jr. being another of our under-rated giants of song). Johnny Mathis is still going strong. He continues to tour and, in fact, has a full concert schedule ahead of him this coming summer. I ve read that John remains true to his physical health as he did as a college athelte and we can only hope that he'll be with us for many, many years to come. Bringing us his unique, one of a kind vocal stylings of the world's great songs. For me, though, I'll always remember a guy, not much older than I, singing Chances Are as spun by Frantic Fred to a 14 year old beauty named Sally Stanley. Thanks for the memories, John, it's been a wonderful trip from then until now and I can only hope that Chances Are will live long after many lesser lights have faded into the mists of pop music history. Joe M. Hayes Del Mar, CA May 13, 2002