Johnny Mathis on new album and plans: My dream is to sing a duet with Adele

Legendary crooner Johnny Mathis is admiring the view from the penthouse apartment in Beverly Hills where he has lived since his home of 56 years burnt down in November 2015. “It’s sunny, it’s California so it’s always nice,” he laughs.

“I overlook the skyline of all these apartment buildings and there’s a big office complex of sky-high people cutting their money.” It’s 9am in Los Angeles when we speak and although Mathis will be 82 next week he has already been to the gym for his daily workout.

When the fire started at his home in the Hollywood Hills he was on a flight back to Los Angeles from Cleveland, where he’d been performing. He arrived to find more than 40 fi refi ghters outside the charred remains of his beloved house.

“Unfortunately the housekeeper hadn’t been there for three days and there was a smouldering electrical wire that burned the house down,” he recalls. “It was kind of a shock but I was only concerned about whether anybody was in the house and fortunately no one was. I’m a very lucky man, I could’ve been there, I could’ve been in bed. I was a little sad of course but very lucky.

“Some wonderful people from my insurance company came through like dam-busters and put me up in this penthouse while my house is rebuilt.” Mathis exudes warmth and is genuinely modest. He laughs a lot during our conversation, raucously so when he asks me how he should celebrate his birthday and I suggest he takes a lead from my threeyear-old son who has requested a “champagne pool party” for his own big day, also this month.

Next week’s a big one for the singer because it also sees the release of his new album Johnny Mathis Sings The Great New American Song Book. Featuring 11 “inimitable interpretations” of contemporary classics, including Happy, originally a hit for Pharrell Williams, Just the Way You Are by Bruno Mars and Adele’s Hello, it’s an unexpected departure from his usual ballads.

He admits that until recently he wasn’t a big fan of modern music. “I hadn’t really fallen in love with any music in the past 10 years because it’s been quite different to what I sang when I first started,” he explains.

“But a friend of mine, Clive Davis, who used to be the president of Columbia Records, suggested a few more current songs for me. “I kind of thought they were, oh, what’s the word? I don’t know, I didn’t like them at first.

Anyway, I sang them and then I got to appreciate them and it all turned out to be a lot of fun for me.” I F IT feels as though Mathis has been around for ever, it’s because he has. 

His first album was released in 1956, since when he has made another 78 plus six original Christmas albums. To date he’s the third biggestselling artist of the 20th century and has shifted more than 180 million albums worldwide. In 1958 his album Johnny’s Greatest Hits was the first of its kind and spent an unprecedented 490 continuous weeks (almost 10 years) on the Billboard top albums chart in America.

With dozens of gold records to his name including for hits such as Chances Are and Misty, he outsold Elvis in the early 1960s and his total sales rival those of Frank Sinatra. Barbra Streisand once said: “When the other kids used to listen to Elvis I listened to Johnny Mathis, modelling my style after his.” Yet it could all have been very different.

The fourth of seven children, Mathis was born in Texas on September 30, 1935, to Clem and Mildred Mathis. His love of music comes from his father who taught him his first song, My Blue Heaven, and enrolled him with a voice coach aged 13. Yet at school he was known as much for his abilities as a high jumper and hurdler as he was for his singing and had aspirations to be a PE teacher.

His high jump record at San Francisco State College was only two inches below the Olympic record at the time. He was due to compete in trials for the Olympic Games in 1955 but just days earlier was offered a fi veyear recording contract with Columbia Records and chose music over sport. “If I’d pursued athletics I’d have been retired a long, long time ago,” reflects Mathis. 

“I’m just grateful to my dad. He was my best pal and the reason that I sing today is because I loved him so much. He was quite a wonderful singer. I followed in his footsteps and he guided me brilliantly.” During his 61-year career Mathis has racked up 43 singles on the Billboard charts in America and, remarkably he still retains the dark wavy hair and boyish good looks of his youth.

Men half his age would kill for his lithe physique. He credits this youthful appearance to healthy eating – he’s a gourmet cook but plays down his skills, saying that his cooking “has gone downhill lately” – playing golf and those daily workouts in the gym.

“It’s the catalyst as far as me being physically able to do what I do but I tell my personal trainer that I want to look good on stage too,” he laughs. “I’ve kept up my exercise routine for over 40 years. It’s a lot of trouble and I often don’t feel like doing it but I get up and I go to the gym. “We exercise from top to bottom, with a lot of sit-ups and a lot of time on the bike. 

As far as my voice is concerned I’ve got to give credit to the wonderful voice teacher I worked with for six years when I was 13 years old. “She said, ‘Whether you can or not you’re going to want to sing all your life so you’ve got to look after your voice’.

“I automatically make sure I don’t talk too much. It’s something you get used to if you’re constantly aware that next week you have to sing. But at least I’m not as bad as the opera singers. It’s kind of funny the lengths they go to not to talk.” Mathis, who came out as gay in the 1990s, has always shied away from giving interviews and once explained: “Fame requires you to give up a lot but I don’t want to give up my privacy. I want to sing and have people enjoy that and then be left alone.

I don’t want to be in the gossip columns.” Incredibly he still does a couple of live performances a month and, despite having sung with many greats including Deniece Williams, Billy Joel and Dionne Warwick, he reveals that there’s now another famous singer on his radar since recording one of her hits on his new album.

“I think Adele is quite wonderful and I think she might have mentioned me once in conversation,” he says. “I’ve seen her perform but I haven’t met her. But you know, if she called up and said she needed a singing partner, I’m available.” As for his impending birthday next week, with typical modesty he says that, actually, he has only two wishes. “I want to get back to my house in the next six months but most of all I just want another year that’s as good as the last one has been for me.” 

Johnny Mathis Sings The Great New American Song Book is released by Sony Music on September 29.