But it didn’t really matter as long as we got the song.
I found out that later on, these people who came to me and said that they just wrote it just for me had written it 20 years before. I guess he wrote them for me-you never know, you know. He wrote a couple wonderful songs for me. I think he was in the publishing business with Mitch Miller, as some of the young writers were at the time. He jumped right in when I was available to sing single records and we became friends. Yeah, Bert was really early on, he was very businesslike about his music, which I loved, and as I got to know him over the years, appreciated it. You had worked with Bacharach quite a bit. It was fun to sing-some of it worked and some of it, ha ha ha, maybe… I even ended up in Brazil-places where I had to learn the language a little bit. So now when I listen to that, I kind of remember that!īut, you know, you do so much in your life, especially at an early age when I was running all over the world singing. So I went over there and we got pretty heavy into schnapps before dinner and what have you. Ha! I hope I’m not giving out too much information but I had never had schnapps before. I’d always been a fan of the music of Bert Kaempfert, and got a chance to work with him. I had just started going to England on and off, and then on one of my occasions I just went on across the channel to Germany.
Your ’70s albums are just being reissued, starting last week with Johnny Mathis Sings the Music of Bacharach and Kaempfert and Raindrops Keep Fallen’ On My Head, a collection of songs from that period. We talked to Mathis about these recordings and more, from coming up through jazz to meeting The Beatles.
THE BEST DAYS OF MY LIFE JOHNNY MATHIS SERIES
The series begins with Raindrops Keep Fallin’ on My Head, which includes covers of the title song as well as “Everybody’s Talkin’” and “Bridge Over Troubled Water,” and Johnny Mathis Sings the Music of Bacharach & Kaempfert, which includes his rendition of “The Look of Love” and “I’ll Never Fall in Love Again” from Burt Bacharach, as well as versions of Bert Kaempfert’s work that includes “Danke Schoen,” “Spanish Eyes,” and “Strangers in the Night.” Both will be available as stand-alone CDs for the first time in the U.S., and both come with extra tracks. This month, Real Gone Music and Second Disc Records have started a new series re-issuing Mathis’ albums from the 1970s. He’s not strayed from contemporary sounds, as his Johnny Mathis Sings the Great New American Songbook, produced by Kenny “Babyface” Edmonds, includes hits from Pharrell Williams, Adele, and Bruno Mars among others. He’s released a truckload of albums along the way, evidenced by the massive 68-disc collection The Voice of Romance: The Columbia Original Album Collection which arrived in stores late last year. Since his early hits with “Chances Are,” “It’s Not for Me to Say,” and “Misty,” he’s been recording and performing for decades, occasionally returning to the charts with things like his 1978 Number 1 “Too Much, Too Little, Too Late” with Deniece Williams. Johnny Mathis’ music has become synonymous with romantic pop ballads.
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