Johnny Mathis was born on September 30, 1935. Mathis is best known as an interpreter of romantic ballads, but in his 60-year career, he’s recorded in a wide range of musical styles—standards and show tunes, jazz, country, Latin, tropical, and R&B.

Mathis grew up in San Francisco and got his first music lessons from his father, a former vaudeville entertainer who taught Mathis some of his old songs and routines. He began taking voice lessons at the age of thirteen. By 1955, Mathis was singing weekend shows at a San Francisco jazz club. A Columbia Records executive heard him perform there and sent an excited telegram to Columbia: "Have found phenomenal 19-year-old boy who could go all the way. Send blank contracts."

After Columbia scheduled Mathis’s first recording sessions in 1956, he was faced with a difficult choice. He was a talented athlete, attending San Francisco State College on an athletic scholarship. Mathis had been invited to try out for the 1956 Olympic team as a high jumper, but the trials were scheduled at the same time as his recording sessions. He chose not to delay his first recordings and skipped the Olympic trials.

That first album was a jazz-flavored collection of familiar standards by (among others) Cole Porter, Duke Ellington, and Rodgers & Hammerstein. It wasn’t a huge seller, but Columbia producer Mitch Miller quickly found the formula that worked for Mathis—romantic ballads with lush arrangements. Within a year, he’d released four of his biggest hit singles, “Wonderful! Wonderful!,” “The Twelfth of Never,” “It’s Not for Me to Say,” and the #1 hit “Chances Are.”

Those songs are all gathered on the album Johnny’s Greatest Hits. The album was an extraordinary success, spending almost 500 weeks on the Billboard album chart, a record that wouldn’t be broken until Pink Floyd’s The Dark Side of the Moon 25 years later.

As was common for pop singers of this era, there often wasn’t much connection between a singer’s hit singles and his albums. Mathis’s second album, for instance, was named Wonderful Wonderful, but the song of the same name wasn’t on the album. It wasn’t until his eighth album that a single would be released from one of Mathis’s album; “Misty” became one of his signature songs.

Mathis landed another pair of pop hits in late 1962, “Gina” and “What Will Mary Say,” but the musical world was quickly moving away from his gentle, romantic style towards rock and roll. In 1963, he moved to Mercury Records, which offered him the chance to produce his own records and ownership of his recordings. He made some interesting steps away from his comfort zone while at Mercury, most notably with Olé, an album of Latin music.

But Mathis was never really happy at Mercury and realized that he worked better under the guidance of a strong producer. The relationship began to sour after Mathis recorded an album of Broadway songs in 1965, and Mercury refused to release it, thinking it was too upbeat compared to the romantic songs they wanted him to record. Broadway wouldn’t be released until 2012.

When Mathis returned to Columbia in 1967—and he’s been there ever since—he settled into a formula that would dominate his albums for the next twenty years. His records were a mix of standards and covers of recent pop hits; most of his albums were named for a song that had recently been a hit for someone else: Up, Up and Away; Song Sung Blue; Feelings.

The formula wasn’t exclusive to Mathis; a lot of singers who’d begun their careers singing traditional pop at the beginning of the rock era were doing the same thing. In August 1971, Mathis released an album called You’ve Got a Friend. And so did Andy Williams, a singer of a similar style and age; the albums featured seven songs in common.

Mathis was primarily an album artist during this era, though an occasional record got played at adult contemporary radio. His version of “A Time for Us,” the theme from Franco Zeffirelli’s film of Romeo and Juliet, did well, as did the original song “I’m Coming Home.” The album I’m Coming Home was a rare departure from the Mathis formula; it was mostly original songs, and it was produced by Thom Bell, best known as one of the masters of Philadelphia soul.

Mathis made an unexpected return to the pop chart in 1978 with “Too Much, Too Little, Too Late,” a duet with Deniece Williams that spent four weeks at #1. It was a big enough success that Mathis and Williams followed it up with an entire album of duets, and for the next several years, most of Mathis’s albums would include a duet. A couple of them were minor successes—“Friends in Love,” with Dionne Warwick; “Better Together,” with Regina Belle—and his duets were eventually collected into the album Better Together.

The happy relationship between Mathis and Columbia records suffered a couple of jolts in the 1980s when the label refused to release two albums. I Love My Lady found Mathis working with producers Bernard Edwards and Nile Rodgers, the leaders of the disco band Chic; The Island was a Brazilian-flavored album. Both albums were finally released in 2017.

In the mid-1980s, there was a small trend of pop stars recording standards albums. Linda Ronstadt was working with Nelson Riddle; Barbra Streisand returned to her roots with The Broadway Album. And Mathis returned fully to standards for the first time since he’d recorded Broadway in 1965 (and at this point, that album still hadn’t been released). He teamed up with Henry Mancini for The Hollywood Musicals. That started a new phase in Mathis’s career, and his new albums since then have built around specific themes—songwriters Duke Ellington and Diane Warren, a country collection, 50s/60s pop favorites.

Mathis’s most recent album, in 2017, is devoted to “the great new American songbook,” and features his covers of songs by Leonard Cohen, Keith Urban, Bruno Mars, and Adele.

There is one other type of music that Mathis has made a specialty of throughout his career; he’s recorded six Christmas albums, and if you celebrate Christmas, the odds are good that one of Mathis’s recordings is part of your holiday memories.

In 2003, the National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences awarded Mathis the Lifetime Achievement Grammy Award. Three of his records have been inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fames—“Chance Are,” “It’s Not for Me to Say,” and “Misty.”

Mathis’s complete work for both Columbia and Mercury, more than 70 albums, is available for streaming and download at Freegal.