Johnny Mathis - "Johnny's Greatest Hits"

Artist: Johnny Mathis
Title: Johnny's Greatest Hits
Label: Columbia
Year: 1958
Series: None
Type: Standard Greatest Hits

Review: In the beginning, there was darkness... and then Johnny's Greatest Hits!

Ok that statement may be a bit of an exaggeration but there is truth to it. Johnny's Greatest Hits is what is considered to be the first true compilation in popular music, predating Elvis' Golden Records by a year. At the time Mathis had racked up a large wealth on non-album chart hits in the mid-50's with classics like When Sunny Gets Blue and Wonderful! Wonderful! that an album like this just seemed like a good idea at the time (nowadays we'd call it practically revolutionary). Whoever thought of it first at CBS deserves credit, this album spent a ridiculously long time on the Billboard Charts (over 400 weeks, a record eventually broken by Pink Floyd, and now unattainable due to the introduction of the Pop Catalog chart).

But how fair the music? Well for most fans the core Mathis catalog is all on this album. Chances Are, The Twelth of Never, and All The Time were the quintessential make out tunes of the 50s with their use of unearthly female backing chorus and luscious strings. This is Mathis in his romantic mode, no jazzy stuff like Teacher's Pet allowed, and considering he never really worked well in a jazzy setting, this is all for the best.

Regrettably, for all its commercial and historical merits, Johnny's Greatest Hits has never been properly treated by Columbia. All these tracks were originally mono singles and so was the initial release of this album. Sales however took a hit in the 60s due to the lack of desire to buy a mono album for Stereo equipment. So Columbia elected to remaster and reissue this album in "Electronically Re-channeled Stereo!"(translation: Duophonic) and it has been this master that has been used ever since. Bottom line: it sounds terrible. Duophonic stereo was never convincing, fluctuating between a heavily reverbed mono or the feeling you were underwater. These flaws all got transferred over to the cd release, which dates back to the mid-80's and has never been remastered. Dire straits all around.

So why bother with Johnny's Greatest Hits? Mostly its for reasons of historical merit. This is a good set of classic tracks that, despite awful sound quality, does paint a pretty good picture of what was popular in the easy-listening days of the mid-50s. There are other Mathis compilations out there but none of them do as good a job of covering this period as well as this one does.

Ratings:

Music: ***** (classic 50s easy listening makeout music)
Packaging: *** 1/2 (vinyl: just a sleave, CD: has a small essay for liner notes)
Sound: ** (Duophonic = BAD)
Overall: *** 1/2

Ratings are based off a rating scale of one to five stars.