![]() ![]() White admirers perceived him as one of them. Yet, he says, "fans were often surprised to discover I was black," even though his face graced every album cover. Most of the time, I sang them pretty good." "I was cute," Mathis concedes, resting in a lounge chair in his furnished penthouse rental. He's one of the most handsome men I've met," says Deniece Williams, the R&B star who collaborated with Mathis in the '70s. The face, dimpled chin and all, matched the voice. He was a man in the vanguard but performing as a most traditional artist, with a catalogue of classics and a 29-piece band. Long before the terms "multiracial and "gender-fluid" came into vogue, Mathis owned those spaces. "Poised on the cusp of black and white, masculine and feminine," Mathis's finest songs "projected an image of egoless tenderness, an irresistible breath of sensuality," critic Robert Christgau wrote. A singer's singer: Barbra Streisand proclaimed, "There are a number of good singers, a smaller handful of truly great singers, and then there's Johnny Mathis."Ī black artist favored by predominantly white audiences. Feelgood-to-the-stars Max Jacobson, whose infamous amphetamine cocktail landed Mathis in the hospital and almost sidelined his career. ![]() Winner of the Sinatra-vs.-Mathis "best make-out singer" debate, as adjudicated in the 1982 film "Diner." The unlikely role model of high-camp maven John Waters, who once hailed him as "so unironic, yet perfect." Collegiate high-jump champion whose 6-foot-5½ record bested that of future NBA legend Bill Russell. An album-selling juggernaut whose 1958 "Johnny's Greatest Hits" spent almost a decade nesting on Billboard's chart.Ī confidant of Nancy Reagan ("we talked about everything and everyone"), who nudged him to deal with his champagne habit at a Jesuit rehab in Havre de Grace, Maryland. Here's who: Columbia Records' longest-running recording artist. Go to the man behind the desk at the hotel. "New generations come along all the time who don't know who you are. "You have to take advantage of every opportunity," Mathis says, flat on his back in socked feet while lifting 20-pound free weights. His crystalline enunciation, caressing every note, never quite jelled with rock 'n' roll. And literal soundtracks: "Goodfellas," "Play Misty for Me," "Mad Men." In 2017, he recorded an album covering contemporary hits (Adele, Bruno Mars, Josh Groban) with smooth-jazz trimmings: "Johnny Mathis Sings the Great New American Songbook." But his fans require the classics. His music became the soundtrack for people's lives, for their loves and heartaches. Mathis's self-discipline extends to a practice of limited talking in the days before a concert to maintain his lustrous tenor, "which is everything" - his livelihood, his identity. "The age thing crept into my life for the first time when I became 80 years old." "Everything counts when you're onstage," he says, perched on a stationary bike at a hotel gym. Johnny Mathis, master of the velvet vibrato, exercises with a personal trainer at 5:30 in the blasted morning every weekday that he's not on perpetual tour of America's midsize cities and casinos.
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