Happy Birthday, Johnny Mathis

Remember the wonderful moment when the house shakes & a glow appears under the front door & a record player has the sound of Johnny Mathis singing Chances Are filling the room as we have the first ET encounter in Close Encounters of the Third Kind? He was well represented in my parent’s record collection & I have loved his velvet voice for 5 decades… so why do I feel he is a gulity pleasure?

This clip is from Johnny's first TV appearence 1957 on Ed Sullivan.


In 1958, Johnny’s Greatest Hits was released and was the first ever Greatest Hits album in the music industry. It began the Greatest Hits tradition copied by every record company. Johnny's Greatest Hits spent an unprecedented 490 consecutive weeks (nine and a half years) on the Billboard album charts, a feat earning him a place in the Guinness Book of World Records & not broken until the 1980s by Pink Floyd's The Dark Side of the Moon. He has had five of his albums on the Billboard charts simultaneously, an achievement equaled by only 2 other singers, Frank Sinatra & Barry Manilow. He has produced over 60 albums, released 200 singles & had 71 songs charted around the world. He is Barbra Streisand’s favorite singer & one of mine.