Joubert's Full Review: Merry Christmas by Johnny Mathis
The music industry almost had to create a new Christmas music category for Johnny Mathis. Ranked by Billboard as the 8th highest charted album artist from 1955-1995, Mathis released a number of well received Christmas albums in the 1950s and 1960s. My favorite of this brilliant vocalists seasonal music is Merry Christmas.
What’s A Christmas Album Doing On The Top 200?
Camping there, apparently.
Released by Columbia in 1958, Merry Christmas reached #3 on the pop charts that December. The album then proceeded to enter the pop charts every December for the next four years. Certified gold by 1960, the album was simply a holiday staple.
Billboard created a special Christmas chart for 10 years beginning in 1963, and one doesn’t have to stretch too far to realize that Mr. Mathis’ Christmas work may have been a big part of that choice. After all, how many times does an artist chart the same album in the top 10 in five different years? (Don’t bother researching – they don’t).
The Christmas charts disappeared from 1974-1982 until they were started again. Mathis dominated those charts too – with successive efforts The Joy of Christmas and Give Me Your Love For Christmas
You Are Influencing Your Children’s Musical Choices
Don’t think so? You’ve seen Merry Christmas’ chart pedigree. On the Christmas charts, the album finished top 15 every year during the 1960s and once again in 1973. The album didn’t chart again when Billboard revived its Christmas charts until 1988. Hmm, anyone good at math?
That seems to be about the right amount of time for the children who grew up listening to Mathis to grow up themselves, have families and seek out tradition-laden Christmas holidays of their own.
Studying charts is a hobby of mine and spotting cyclical trends is always a fun puzzle. But anyone can spot this generation leaping trend. I’m living proof. Last year, I suggested to my wife that our annual tradition of buying a new Christmas album should be replaced with buying an old one. Our first was the restored Merry Christmas on CD.
And you know what? I haven’t felt this nostalgic during the holidays in a decade. Music is a powerful emotive device. Listening to this CD (which I’ve now down more than a dozen times in the last two weeks) evokes wisps of Christmas memories. I can usually work with a CD going, in fact, I prefer to do so, but that’s hard with this gem. I actually caught myself pulling down a guitar and playing along the other day while I was in the middle of working.
Think about that the next time you tell yourself that your kid is too young to understand the nihilistic lyrics your stereo is blaring within their earshot. And then get some headphones.
Wasn’t Johnny Mathis Just One Of Those Old Singers, Anyway?
Yeah. Like Sinatra and Tony Bennett. Stop already. Mathis influenced pop, and to some extent, soul, as much if not more than anyone. A gifted vocalist, he began operatic training at the age of 13. At the age of 13, I was trying to remember the words to songs I heard four times a day on the radio.
Mathis was also a gifted track star at San Francisco State College who turned down an invitation to the 1956 Olympic trials to head for Columbia Records. There, Mitch Miller handed him Wonderful! Wonderful! and a star was born. By May of 1957, Mathis had charted the single in the Top 20 of all four major music publications.
Good looking, athletic and gifted with a voice that glided to impossibly high reaches, Mathis landed two albums in the top 4 spots that year. America couldn’t get enough of the vocalist in his early 20s. In just three years, Mathis had charted eleven albums on Billboard’s Top 20. His biggest competition: Elvis.
No one else came close until The Beatles and given the milking each album gets nowadays, I find it highly doubtful that any future artist is ever going to be given the chance to cut three or four albums a year, no matter how popular they are. There’s a white paper in there somewhere regarding the trading of multiple albums for multiple sales of the same album as is today’s trend, but it’s Christmas time, so let’s listen.
Dropping The Needle, Cut-by-Cut
Percy Faith’s orchestra opens the album with a bell and tympani heavy brief intro to Winter Wonderland. Mathis’ voice simply leaps into the music with a joyful tone. After the familiar first verses, a wonderful string section demonstrates some deft rhythm work as Mathis demonstrates his jazz roots. When he sings about the snowman becoming a circus clown, his voice takes on a charming lilt, but then he turns all business again as he follows the orchestra down a glissando trail through more than an octave.
The jazz influence returns on The Christmas Song. Nat King Cole’s vocal was homier, but Mathis’ is just as sweet. The operatic training is evident, particularly as the song builds to conclusion and Mathis vocalizes reindeer really know how to fly. Mathis’ voice takes flight on the word “know”, soars by the word “fly” and segues into the next verse with less than a quarter note rest. The orchestra counterpoints several verses by playing Jingle Bells on muted xylophones. What’s impressive from a critical standpoint is hearing Mathis’ range on this song. The notes that we’ve become accustomed to hearing pop vocalists sing in falsetto are neatly handled by Mathis.
Sleigh Ride is the most pop-oriented cut on the album. As they are throughout, Faith’s arrangements are dead-on perfect, always audible but never overpowering. Ready to dismiss the cut, the listener who hits the fast forward button will miss vocal gymnastics worthy of Bobby McFerrin on the bridge.
Remember when I said that Elvis was the only artist close to Mathis in chart success? Mathis next covers Blue Christmas, conjuring up images of smoky supper clubs in early December. Presley obviously owns the definitive version of this song, but Mathis gives a credible jazz standard performance. The violins are a little too sweet for those used to hearing The King’s version, but the song fits neatly into its slot, slowing the tempo enough to introduce a more somber section of the album.
Listen! Guitars! That’s what you’ll hear on I’ll Be Home For Christmas. The supper club imagery is still present up until the bridge when Faith’s strings take to variety TV show volume and nearly wreck the song’s entire ambience. The arrangements are jazz-tinged, as is some English Mathis drops on a few phrases, but his tone, diction and power seem a tad out-of-place. It’s almost as if there are two vocalists here; one who wants to plant feet firmly and hit an impossibly high note and one who wants to swing a little. They co-exist somewhat uneasily, but the listener by now is so used to hearing the variety of moods conveyed in Mathis’ voice that there’s no real disconnect.
Not content to fiddle with Elvis’ Blue Christmas, young Mathis next takes dead aim on Bing’s White Christmas. Again, Crosby’s version will be the one forever ingrained in the public’s mind, but as Mathis’ voice dips into the lower part of his register and holds perfect tone, one wonders what would have happened had Mathis’ version come out first. That is, after the Percy Faith Singers are cut from the recording. I can deal with the bells, the sweetened strings and all sorts of percussion. I have much more trouble dealing with the infamous Singers trying to sound like a heavenly choir. The effect is of bad jingle and session singers hired for the evening.
A muted tolling bell signals the album’s hallmark, O Holy Night. This is the song you must hear, the one where orchestra, arrangement and vocalist combine to perform a song so achingly beautiful that one wonders if it can be surpassed. The three elements blend that well. This song is quite simply the best Christmas track I’ve ever heard on any album anywhere. There are more than 100 copies available on Napster as of this writing. If I haven’t yet convinced you to buy the album, then at least download this song and let Mathis convince you to do so.
The Singers return for What Child Is This?, but they are behind Mathis now as opposed to having lines of their own except in transition phrases. All pretense of jazz or pop is dropped on this cut. Mathis showcases his voice over all. Also known as Greensleeves, the hymn-based lyrics are given regal treatment by Mathis who simply treats the piece classically and gives full voice to the tender words.
The First Noel is then given a nice treatment. I’ve never cared much for the song, and the arrangement is too vocal heavy for my liking, but it’s certainly a beautiful version.
The next song is one that never fails to bring a smile to my face. Growing up in New York in the 1960s, Silver Bells conjures up images of Macy’s, Radio City dressed in holiday style. Any big city will do, but to me this has always been New York’s song. The song is Mathis’ as well. If one must have a secular seasonal standard identified with them, there are many worse songs. Listen to Mathis drive the end of this song a full octave beyond where he’s been singing, complete with a cold ending. No wimpy fade out into an echo for this song!
It Came Upon A Midnight Clear gets a gorgeous rendition as well. Faith alternates the orchestra and vocalists as the song’s base, lending a gentle, rocking motion to the ancient hymn. The third verse is an absolute killer. Sung in a soft tenor with almost no orchestra, the listener is forgiven for the thought that Mathis is trilling in their ear.
Somewhere in a big book of rules exists this code: “Any Christmas album, regardless of length, must conclude with a full version of all verses of Silent Night.” Yes, the song is beautiful. Yes, Mathis stays with in classical form and gives an outstanding performance. Yes, the song has all the forgotten verses. By now, overwhelmed, you’re forgiven if you nudge the song forward a little faster, particularly when the entire chorale sings in duet fashion on the third verse. Again, don’t do that, because you’ll miss one of the sweetest pure notes on the album. Yes, of course that note appears in the line Sleep in heavenly peace.
The Bottom Line, Skips and All
Traditional Christmas? You need a copy of this. Not up to that at this point in your life? Tuck this Epinion away for when you’re ready. Several artists have done prettier or more popular versions of several of these songs. For the entire 12 cuts, however, no one has yet released a better balanced, more beautiful Christmas album.
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