True fact: Legendary crooner Johnny Mathis turned down a chance to go to the 1956 Summer Olympics as a high jumper to become a singer.
As he would explain for years, it was his father's advice to pursue music as a career.
Good advice, pops! In the 1950s and early 1960s, the San Francisco native was one of the greatest singers of the early rock era, scoring memorable hits such as "Chances Are," "It's Not For Me To Say," "Misty," "Gina," "What Will Mary Say" and "The Twelfth Of Never." He was a superstar, but also accomplished two chart records that seemed unreachable when he attained them in the pre-Beatles era.
The first of those records was with his 1958 album "Johnny's Greatest Hits." This No. 1 album of three weeks had memorable staying power. By the time the album finally fell off the Billboard Top 200 chart, it had accumulated 491 weeks. The second of those records was with his 1957 hit smash "Wonderful! Wonderful!" Though the Sherman Edwards-Ben Raleigh composition never made the Top 10, it had incredible staying power, too, spending 39 weeks on the Billboard Top 100 chart, one of three charts used to track the hits of the day before Billboard came up with its official Hot 100 chart the next year. Nonetheless, Casey Kasem would always tell his AT40 listeners that the record for the longest-charting song on the chart was that Mathis classic.
However, one thing that didn't have staying power was Mathis' career on the pop singles charts. Between 1957-63, Mathis score 18 Top 40 smashes, but when 1963 turned to 1964, he and a bunch of artists could not survive the onslaught of the Beatles and the British Invasion. For the next 14 years, Mathis' biggest chart singles were 1964's "Bye, Bye Barbara," which got to No. 53 and 1973's "Life Is A Song Worth Singing," which got to No. 54. Mathis found a niche on the adult contemporary chart for older listeners turned off by the sounds of rock 'n roll and scored a No. 1 hit on that chart in 1973 called "I'm Coming Home," a song written by Thom Bell and the late Linda Creed and re-recorded into a Top 40 hit in 1974 by the Spinners.
Mathis was 42 years old as 1977 was nearing its end and seemed content to be a crooner in a time when music was continually evolving, just like Frank Sinatra. He continued to sell out arenas from coast to coast and all over Europe. He was content to do remakes of other artists' songs. Even if he may have been a little "square" for a younger audience, his older fans continued to buy his albums. Still, his pop music career was all but seemingly over.
But an amazing thing happened at that time -- a pair of songwriters, John Vallins and Nate Kipner brought Columbia Records a song they wrote. It was "Too Much, Too Little, Too Late." Producer Jack Gold saw potential in the song, especially since this was an original. He turned to Mathis and felt he and a duet partner would perfect on the song. Willing to give the song a try, Mathis agreed and Gold recruited fellow Columbia Records artist Deniece Williams, who one year earlier had a Top 25 pop hit "Free," which went to No. 2 on the soul chart and No. 1 in England. The pair laid the track down and the song was included on Mathis' album, "You Light Up My Life," named for the Debby Boone monster No. 1 hit that Mathis did a remake of for the new album. Also on that album were three songs that had been recent Top 40 hits that Mathis remade -- Ronnie Milsap's "It Was Almost Like A Song," the Bee Gees' "How Deep Is Your Love" and Samantha Sang's "Emotion," written by Barry and Robin Gibb of Bee Gees fame.
Columbia Records released "Too Much, Too Little, Too Late" in February 1978 and immediately hit the R&B chart. Within a few weeks, it had gone to No. 1 -- a large feat for Mathis considering that he had just three Top 40 R&B hits in his entire career! He had one Top 10 R&B hit -- in 1959, "Misty" hit No. 10. That was it.
A month after the song started soaring to No. 1 on the R&B chart, ready to spend four weeks at No. 1 there, "Too Much, Too Little, Too Late" made its Hot 100 debut on April 1. Two weeks later, it was at No. 41, ready to become Mathis' first Top 40 hit since 1963's "Every Step Of The Way" peaked at No. 30.
On the week of April 22, 1978, "Too Much, Too Little, Too Late" made another hefty climb on the Hot 100, jumping from No. 41 to debut all the way up at No. 20, the highest of six Top 40 debuts, which also included Andy Gibb's future third straight No. 1 hit, "Shadow Dancing."
Mathis was back in and having a singing partner in Williams certainly didn't hurt one bit.
One week later on April 29, the song jumped another 10 notches to land at No. 10, the first Top 10 hit for Mathis since "What Will Mary Say" peaked at No. 9. After getting to No. 6 the next week, "Too Much, Too Little, Too Late" jumped to No. 4 for the week of May 13, 1978, the first Top 5 hit for Mathis since "Chances Are" in 1957.
On May 20, the song jumped up to No. 3, then on May 27, 1978, it was at No. 2. Finally, the week of June 3, it was Mathis' revenge on any one of the Beatles as "Too Much, Too Little, Too Late" jumped from No. 2 to No. 1, displacing Paul McCartney and Wings' "With A Little Luck" at the top. It was Mathis' first No. 1 hit in the Hot 100 era ("Chances Are" was a No. 1 hit in the pre-Hot 100 era).
As if he had just gotten a spring in his step, Mathis was revived. his remake of the Marvin Gaye-Tammi Terrell 1960s classic, "You're All I Need To Get By," another duet with Williams, climbed the Hot 100, but could only get to No. 47. In 1982, Mathis hit the Top 40 for the 20th and last time in his career when his duet with Dionne Warwick, "Friends In Love," got as high as No. 38. Later in 1978, he recorded the beautiful "The Last Time I Fell In Love" with singer Jane Olivor for the movie Same Time, Next Year. The song was nominated for an Oscar, but lost out to Donna Summer's Top 5 summer smash "Last Dance" from the movie Thank God It's Friay.
These days, Mathis records the occasional CD, but mainly Christmas material, including 2013's "Sending You A Little Christmas," which included the Top 5 adult contemporary title track hit. Williams' career flourished into the 1980s with 1982's Top 10 hit "It's Gonna Take A Miracle" and her 1984 No. 1 hit from the Footloose soundtrack, "Let's Hear It For The Boy," her second chart-topper.
But for Mathis, that whole thing about "staying power" records he held disintegrated. When "Too Much, Too Little, Too Late" debuted at No. 20 on April 22, 1978, one of the six songs that fell out of the Top 40 was Paul Davis' "I Go Crazy," which spent 25 weeks in the Top 40, peaking at No. 7. "I Go Crazy" was in its 35th week on the Billboard Hot 100. Five weeks later as Mathis was at No. 2 on May 27, 1978, "Wonderful! Wonderful!" got pushed to the side by "I Go Crazy," which at No. 99 was still holding on in the Hot 100 in its now-record 40th week.
And as for his "Johnny's Greatest Hits" mark of 491 weeks on the album chart? Yeah, that record got busted, too, when in October 1983, Pink Floyd's classic 1973 album, "The Dark Side Of The Moon" spent its 492nd week on the chart and has registered well over 900 weeks on the chart in various Top 200 incarnations since.
The record those records made are gone, but the records Johnny Mathis made remain. He's still a favorite of the older generation. But to a younger generation in 1978, he made one more major impact and hit No. 1 in the process.
For Johnny Mathis, it literally wasn't too little and too late.
No comments:
Post a Comment