Johnny Mathis

00:00:15 Speaker 1: Pushkin. Today we're featuring the voice of Christmas, Johnny Mathis. Over the years, mister Matthis has released six Christmas albums. His iconic first one, Mary Christmas, was a tribute to his mother and father and is one of the most beloved collections of Christmas tunes ever. Now eighty seven years old, Johnny's in his sixty sixth year as a recording artist and still performing. In fact, we only had a brief thirty minutes for this conversation because he needs to save his voice for his rigorous performance schedule, which means we didn't get to certain important landmarks in his life and career, like releasing the first ever best of compilation Johnny's Greatest Hits in nineteen fifty eight, and the beautiful story of his coming out as a gay man in nineteen eighty two. But we did get to talk about performing with his musical heroes like Duke Ellington and Nat King Cole. Mister Matthis also shares a story about how he turned down the opportunity to qualify for the nineteen fifty six Olympics to instead launch his music career. This is broken record liner notes go the digital age. I'm justin Mitchell. Here's my conversation with the legendary mister Johnny Mathis. Good morning, mister Mathis, Yes, sir, Oh my lord, Wow, it is you. You sound like you. Yeah. Earlier in the morning, I'm really Johnny Mathis. Later on, I don't know when I am. My dad was my best pal. I kind of sort of turned into him in the evening. Oh you do well. I sort of remember him because he had a large family. He had seven kids, he and my mom, and I was happy. It's about my career because I got a chance to make some money and take care of my brothers and sisters at an early time in my life. So yeah, so there's eight of you total. Yeah, incredible. Reading out your parents influence on you, particularly your dad's in music, was so touching to me. Yeah. We were a large family, and usually when you're a large family, everybody had something to do to make it work. And along the way, I was very involved in athletics as a kid through high school and into college. In fact, I was a high jumper and a hurdler, and I my big train to fame, at least in the sports section of a San Francisco Chronicle work that I broke the great Bill Russell basketball players. I broke his high jumper record in college, another Bay Area legend. They didn't realize that Bill and I were pals and it didn't matter who won. Were good buddies. Anyway, When did you first meet Bill Russell, the great Celtics legend. Bill and I went to school at the same time. I went to San Francisco State, He went to u at Tests and I left school and went to New York to make my first recordings. So he ended up in Boston. I ended up in New York, and we were real close together. Who used to call each other all the time because the last time we saw each other we were playing basketball. And you did leave to go to New York to do your first recordings, and interestingly enough, I believe you were quite the athlete. As you mentioned, you were scheduled to do two things pretty much at the same time. One your first recording for Columbia Records. Your first recording session was scheduled in New York, and you were scheduled to go to the Olympic trials to qualify for the fifty six Olympics. Those two things were in conflict, and you decided to go to the recording sessions. Well, my dad, he is a reason I thing, and so when the occurrence happened, as you mentioned, there was no option. I sang because he sang, and that was what we were going to do, and nothing else we get in the way. It didn't matter how good you were at athletics and that you could go to the Olympics. You knew because of those nights you spent with your dad in the basement with him on the piano, you singing, that was what brought you joy and your family brought you joy. That's what you were going to do. Yeah, well, thanks worked out really well, things worked out beautifully for the both of you. Guys. I do want to talk about you, of course, have some of the all time great Christmas songs, some of the great renditions of Christmas songs. It's the holiday season, it's the Christmas season. And another person beyond you that I always think about around Christmas is Nat King Cole. And you got to meet Nat King Cole as a kid, Is that right? He was my vocal hero as a youngster. My dad sang and nobody heard him except that. But he loved Nat Cole and he brought his records home, and that was an occasion for me because occasionally that Cole would sing in San Francisco and my dad would take me to see him, and once in a while I reme a very vague thing that I got a chance to sneak backstage and as he was passing through or something, I got a chance to shake his hand. And then years later after I started recording NAT and I sang in some of the same venues and I'd meet him coming and going by the way, Do you remember me? I remember you and say a little funny word, nacking hole is so just brilliant? What did you learn from him? In terms of phrasing and vocal stylings? But most people don't realize that he was not only one of the greatest singers in the world, but he is one of the great piano players. I remember having a wonderful conversation later on in life with the great ascapedistone and Oscar said to me, oh, John, when I heard Nat, you know, he said, I wanted to quit plan Anyway, the fact remains is that I grew up in that situation in San Francisco. All these famous musicians came through, all the time, and at a very early time, my dad, God bless him. As seven kids, he and my mom. My dad never lost his instincts singing, and that's why I sing. So anytime anybody of stature would come through San Francisco, my dad would take off from work, come home, pick me up, and we'd drive over and he'd sleep me in because I was too young, and I would get a chance to meet some of these great singers elephants still seriv on Lena Horne not called. They all came through San Francisco. And eventually, after I got my start and music and made it my life's work, I worked in so many other venues along the way that he did, and I met him coming and going on so many occasions. Oh I remember you. Diana Washington wrote in her book that she remembered, I think, playing the black Hawk in San Francisco, and she heard you sing and loved it, and you had to sing with her a little bit, or sing with her band a bit. Oh yeah, Well, everybody. The lady who discovered me owned the black Hawk in San Francisco. Her name was Helen Noga. She and her husband and every famous jazz musician and singer came through San Francisco and worked that place, and of course I'm sitting in the back where nobody could see me consective liquor, and I would meet them all when I was sometimes I was sixteen, seventeen years old, and they remembered me after I made my first recordings, because my first recordings were made with George de Vakan, who was head of jazz music at Columbia Records, and that was that was my beginning. So it's been a great kind of growing up life for me, and I was very fortunate to be raised in a place like San Francisco or all these wonderful people came through. Yeah, your first recording session was quite a jazz affair, you know. You had the great arranger, Gil Evans arranging some of the great jazz players on that record, and then your next record went in another direction. It seemed like that determined your career because the next record, Wonderful, Wonderful, was so warmly received and well received that you almost wanted a more pop direction after your first record. Does that seem fair? Yeah? Most people you talked to this thing have many different aspects of their singing. For instance, I was going to San Francisco State College, and my best friend was my opera teacher, and of course later on I got a chance to utilize my voice and voice that were, you know, really reminiscent of the studies that I had with my operataers. But those are the wonderful, sort of vague kind of things that happened along the way in my life that have made a great difference in my being able to sing at such an early age and to have some success. So the fact that I was raised in San Francisco with all these extraordinary people coming through all the time, and I got to meet them and watch them and get a little idea about what it might be like to stand on stage and sing in front of people. And so it's I've been very lucky in that regard. We're going to take a quick break and then we'll be back with more from a conversation with mister Johnny Mathis. We're back with more from Johnny Mathis. What was New York like when you first got there? New York was fast, loud, crazy, wonderful, everything everything that you could think of. That's what New York was. And I was all alone. I was by myself. I had never traveled, but my mom and my dad had seven kids, and we were home bodies all the time. Any kind of money we made, you know, doing odd jobs and things we brought home to show with the family. But when I got to New York, I was alone. But I was absolutely amazed at the kindness that was showed me by so many people who just happened to meet me. They didn't know who I was, I didn't know who they were, but they treated me like a brother or a son or what have you. And from the time I went to New York, nobody knew who I was, and I got a chance to meet some extraordinarily gifted people, and later on in life I got a sense to thanks them. For instance, the one that comes to mind most three is the great Bart Howard, who wrote fly Me to the Moon and so many other wonderful songs, lovely composer. I was fantastics and he was one of my best friends. He heard me sing at an early age and some local nightclub, jab nightclub in San Francisco, one of us doing nothing waiting for the record people to have me come in and make my first recordings. But I got a chance to wander around New York and I, you know, I'd sit in the audience and listen to these singers and occasionally one of them would the heavy come up on stage and sing with him. So it was a wonderful kind of beginning for me. I got the best of the best of some of the finest musicians and singers at an early age, and it helped me a great deal. Absolutely, speaking of some of the best of the best. One of my favorite, absolute favorite records of yours. I don't know if you've heard it recently or not, but Live It Up, your sixty one album, Live It Up with Nelson Riddle, produced by Irving Townsend. Yeah. I was overwhelmed by being able to sing with Nelson Little. And you mentioned it that and I forgot all about that album because that was one of my favorite things in the world is to work with Nelson Little. He was so sweet and so kind to me, and he was the top of the world at that moment, you know, because of his successful thanks to Natza and et. When did you first meet Nelson Riddle or how did that come to be that you worked with them on that album. I don't know, but people like Nelson liddle are so gifted that they don't really equate you with other people. What they want to do is they want to sure they're not with you, and if it turns out good, fine, and if it doesn't, and many times it doesn't, but if it does, you know, all the better for both of us. So I was very lucky in that regard, and early on I met these wonderful composions and the arrangers of music. Some of them I got a chance to perform with. I don't think anything great happened. But oh, what do you mean? That is a lot of great music. You did a lot of great music. Come on, it's so good. Thanks for reminding me you got it. I don't know if you listen to yourself or not, but you should put that on. That is a hell of a record. Oh my god. Good. I'll call the office and have them send me a copy of it and listen to it. Oh man, I don't know if you'll be able to hear this too, but let me see if I can play you the title track off Live It Up. I'm planning to live a wild living. It's good. I'd be good to fill my cup to the brown. It's too hard not to sing along. I'm sorry, I don't want to ruin so good I remember that, my goodness, it was quite an exciting time for me. Yeah, when you work with someone like Nelson Riddle, were you able to make recommendations about the arrangements and things or would you mostly just leave it to the arrangers? Now I was so in awed of Nelson Riddle. He was so kind to me, and fortunately the recordings that we made were successful. Yeah, he was very kind and very embracing. He knew that I didn't really know too much about what I was doing, but he carried me in a direction that worked out just fine. Oh yeah, did you have a relationship with Frank Sinatra at all? I didn't get close to Frank. I knew him because he lives in California, very close to me, and I would see him occasionally at get together that people would have in that regard. And now I was never close to him. But his daughter was one of my best friends, Nancy, and she used to begged me sometimes to talk to Frank and so that he would embrace her a little bit more, because evidently he was traveling all the time, so he didn't see it wasn't that close to his children. Yeah, but I was very close to her, and she would always ask me, when you see my dad, tell him we let me mean we ended seen. Did you get the sense that Frank was maybe a little jealous of you because your voice was so incredibly almost perfect, and because you were kind of like the young kid coming up? You know, I have no idea what someone like him would think of me, other than the fact that vocally I was completely different from his voice. Of course, the one who I was the most indemnied with or whatever the world is, was not cold to me. He would the beginning and the end of music because he was not only a singer, but he was a great physician, and on occasion I would get his chance to see him while he was rehearsing. Occasionally I would have my buddy, who was a piano player, and after he would finish rehearsing that with his group, I would, you know, rehearse with my group. And he remembered that from the time I was about thirteen years old. Yeah, beautiful, beautiful. You know there was a time in sixty three where you left Columbia Records and went to Mercury. Big mistake. Yeah, tell me about that. How come? Oh, it's all money. And the person who was my business manager was all about money. She was a very dynamic Armenian lady. She owned a club called the Black Hawk in San Francisco. Woman who owned the Black Dad. Yeah, and she became your manager. Yeah, he became my manager. And she pulled all the strings as far as who I was gonna be with and what have you. Her best friend turned out to be Georgia Vakan, who was the man's who signmate to Columbia Records. So we made a jazz album with some of the great jazz musicians in the world, but they used funny names. They couldn't use their name because they all signed a record company. You had Art Farmer on there. I mean, you had so many great players on that record. Oh my gosh. Yeah, and the one if you look really your clothes. They got some funny names, and they were very famous musicians because they couldn't use the right name because yeah, there was times recording wise to somebody else, hilarious. A couple of those songs, I think fly Me to the Moon and Prelude to a Kiss. You got to play with Oscar Peterson's trio without Oscar, but you got to play Herbellis on guitar was on that one and Ray Brown on bass. Yeah, that trio of Oscar Urban Ray, that's one I think one of the great bands ever. And you got to have like two of them are on your first record. It's pretty amazing. Yeah. I was absolutely over the move, probably stepped into something that I wasn't ready for vocally artistically. But if you make an effort, and if you're in the right place at the right time, your opportunity to meet some of these people and even perform with some of them. Yeah, and that was a situation with me on that first recording that I did with George Bakin, who is the nicest human being I ever met in my life, and he's the reason that I reshigned to Columbia Records. We'll be right back with more from mister Mathis after a quick break. We're back with the rest of my conversation with Johnny Mathis. I want to play you, just briefly, just a little bit of your rendition of Manage a Carnival from your LA record which was on Mercury. So, even if it was a mistake to go I loved that La record. Yeah don't. It is just mesmerizing hearing that. Thank you. I had so many wonderful opportunities early on because I was signed by the head of jazz, George Vatkin, so nothing was taboo as far as my singing was concerned. I had signed to Columbia by the head of jazz, and of course the head of popular music was Amanda the name of Mitch Miller, and he hated me. Why he didn't like when I was singing, and he was the person that you had to talk to if you were going to make popular music at Columbia Orchestra at that time. He was a headman and he didn't like me at all and what I was doing. But somehow, some way, the management at Record finagled him to record with me, and we went in and did the chances are top of No, you did great records with Mitch Miller. I didn't know he didn't like you. To start. Oh my goodness, what do you think of Brazilian music? I adore Brazilian music. I was raised on it because in San Francisco, so many of the Latins came through there, and that that something that I desperately wanted to do all my life was to make Latin music like Antonio Carlos, Joe Beam, and I just imagine some of these people must have just been big for you. You know. I met so many of them in Brazil. Oh you did you lived in Brazil? When did you live in Brazil? Oh? When I was about nineteen or twenty. Yeah, I lived there and made so many wonderful friends. I loved the langue, love singing in the Portuguese, the way they speak it, like Louise Bonfa and all these just gorgeous composers, and oh, it's amazing. It was amazing to live there as I did at an early age. They never go to bed. All they do is have music in their life and food and occasionally a little drink, maybe a lot of drink, maybe a lot of drink, maybe a lot of drink. When you went to Mercury, were you friends with Quincy Jones who was there at the time same time as you. Oh he was the dearest, sweetest, kindest man in the world and one of the greatest musicians. Of course. Yeah, And all my life, musicians have embraced me because we're doing the same things, except we do it all differently. Yeah, and some of us are better than others, but we're all pals, and you know, we all know that we struggle here and struggle there. And my goodness, some of the greatest musicians in the world I met when I was all alone in New York and I'd go to jazz clubs sit there all by myself, and they'd come over and sit with me, and we'd have a beer or something. And I got to meet them very early in life and had some lifelong friendships in that regard. Did you ever get to meet Duke Ellington? What a lovely human being, not only musically but personally as a as a person. He was so kind to me and so loving. I remember meeting that I had with him when we sat and we played. He played the piano, because everybody came through San Francisco and they had time off in the day and they would walk around or something, and I meet them and do met me, and I sang it for him. He loved it. I remember him sitting down with me at one point, I must have been nineteen years old, and he played the piano and wrote down some things, wrote eve in some a few words, and handed me the sheet to go and learn, and it was like, you know, it was the most magical place for a kid like me to go up in San Francisco. Everybody felt comfortable there, all the musicians who came through, and I got to meet them and become pals with them. Wow. Did you ever connect with Billy Strayhorn, who composed with Duke. I did have a meet meeting with Billy, and I knew that he was the reason for so much of the music that I loved. Yea, and yes, I met him and he was very very kind to me. Wow, what a lovely human being he must have been. I was just to love what the work you did with with Duke Ellington. It was a magical time for me. Yeah. And I love the record you did in nineteen ninety all renditions of Duke ellington songs. It's such a lovely album as well, in a sentimental mood, and you interpreted a lot of a lot of those those tunes that we all love. How important was Christmas to you growing up, mister Matthis, Oh Christmas is a big deal. I come from a large family and of course no money, but we didn't need money. We had each other and we had fins and crazy stuff that we played with. And Christmas was the very loving time. Is the only time that my mom and my dad and my brothers and sisters and I were all together because my dad and my mom had to work their butts off all the time and they were never home really until late in the evening. So Christmas was wonderful because they had to stake a stay around with a family to make sure everybody was, you know, doing what they were supposed to do. Yeah, and so Christmas time was a very special time because everything was shared at Christmas, it seems. So that was a big deal for me. And the first thing that I did when I I met this wonderful man, George Avakians who signed me to Columbia Records, was telling him that if he was really as nice as he seems to be, even let me make a Christmas album for my mom and my dad. Yeah. So you did that for your mom and your dad. That was your way of giving back to your mom and your dad. Yeah, because maybe are the ones that made Christmas happen for us. That fifty eight Christmas record, Man Marry Christmas with Mitch Miller producing, That was great record. I love that it's so good. I don't want to take up too much of your time, if you don't mind, If I could play one more thing for you, I gotta say recently, I was with my grandmother recently and I played her Marvin Gay's version of Maria, and I said, Grandma, listen to this if what do you think about this? Because I just was I loved Marvin's version of Maria. And she goes, you know, that's really nice. But have you heard have you heard Johnny Mathis version? And I said, you know what I have and let me pull it up. And I pulled it up and I was, I was floored, And I just want to play a little bit of it if I feel comfortable with that that high note at the end, when you listen to that song on that high note at the end, Wow. Yeah. That was always a traumatic thing when you're recording, because you get one shot at it the first thing with the orchestra. But fortunately I was in a good voice at the time. Yeah, amazing version. You have one of the great voices of all time, you know. Thank you so much for all you've done in music and for taking the time to speak with me today. Thank you. Thanks again to Johnny Mathis for taking the time to talk with me. You can hear all of our favorite Johnny Mathis songs on a playlist at broken Record byecast dot com. Be sure to subscribe to our YouTube channel at YouTube dot com slash Broken Record Podcast, where we can find all of our new episodes. You can follow us on Twitter at broken Record. Broken Record is produced with help from Leah Rose, Jason Gambrell, Ben Holliday, Eric Sandler, Jennifer Sanchez. Our editor Sophie Crane. Our executive producer is Mia LaBelle. Broken Record is a production of Pushkin Industries. If you love this show and others from Pushkin, consider subscribing to Pushkin Plus. Pushkin Plus is a podcast subscription that offers bonus content an uninterrupted ad free listening for four ninety nine a month. Look for Pushkin Plus on Apple podcast subscriptions. And if you like our show, please remember to share, rate, and review us on your podcast at our theme music spect Hendy Beats. I'm justin Richmond,