Johnny Mathis

Johnny Mathis

John Royce "Johnny" Mathis (born in Gilmer, Texas, on September 30, 1935) is an American singer of popular music. Starting his career with singles of standard music, he became highly popular as an album artist, with several dozen of his albums achieving gold or platinum status, and 73 making the Billboard charts and Guinness World Record music chart historian Paul Gambaccini, confirms "Johnny Mathis has sold well over 350 million records worldwide".

One of the last and most popular in a line of traditional male vocalists who emerged before the rock-dominated 1960s, Johnny Mathis concentrated on the romantic side of jazz and pop music standards for the adult contemporary audience of the 1960s and 1970s. Mathis later made it big in the market for music albums, where a dozen of his LPs hit gold or platinum. While he concentrated on theme-oriented albums of show tunes and traditional favorites during the 1960s, he began incorporating soft rock by the 1970s and remained a popular concert attraction well into the 1990s.

Unsurprisingly, given his emphasis on long sustained notes and heavy vibrato, Mathis studied with an opera coach prior to his teenage years, and he was nearly lured into the opera singing profession.