PRESENTS

Welcome to my op-ed page, The Grapevine News & Views. I started this section in 2002 so that I'd have a place to air my views on my own website. (Go figure.) Who knew blogging would become such a phenomenon! If you've sought this page out, here you will find my views about anything I find or am sent about Johnny Mathis on the Internet and elsewhere, that had been overlooked by the "official" sites. I also find Mathis connections, people, places, and events that have been touched by the influence of Johnny Mathis, and oftentimes I simply ramble. So thanks for reading what I have to say, and thanks for coming by.

VOL. 5 NO. 4 - SEPTEMBER 26, 2006

PRESTON GLASS It's 1988, and I hear what I consider a Thom Bell-style song coming once again out of a Johnny Mathis album, only without the trademark French horns. Nobody used a real orchestra to record with anymore, everything was electronic, and the recording in question had all the hallmarks of an 80's smooth jazz or pop song. The name of the song is "From a Whisper To A Scream", and it's hands-down my favorite track from the Once In A While album, one of Mathis' best selling albums of the 80's. Back in the day, I bought three copies of every Mathis album: CD, LP, and tape for the car. Regardless of media, I had "Whisper" on perpetual repeat for a long time.

It's nice to have some background on Mr. Glass finally. He shares his knowledge as a professor of music at UCLA, something I wish Mathis would look into. He's written some of the biggest songs of the 80's and 90's, such as "Miss You Like Crazy", made famous by Natalie Cole, and "Jimmy Lee" and "Who's Zoomin' Who", popularized by Aretha Franklin. [I wonder if it would have been as been as big a hit if it had been titled the more grammatically-correct "Who's Zoomin' Whom"? But anyway...] He and his brother Alan Glass worked with producer Thom Bell to write songs for the Stylistics and the Spinners. His work as producer is evident to me by his work on Johnny Mathis' Once In A While, but he's produced others as well. He's done session work, doing keyboard and percussion on Whitney Houston's Whitney album. The man can even play the sitar! Now, he's in the spotlight with a new album of his own.

Almost 20 years since Once In A While, give or take a couple years, and Mr. Glass has an album of his own out in cyberspace, and guess who he has invited to contribute on a track? Mr. Glass' new album, Street Corner Prophecy, out since June 2006, and made no mention of at johnnymathis.com or Sony, for whatever reason, features Johnny Mathis on the track "One Wonderful Day". It's a great song! For 99 cents, you can download this song from iTunes, or you can download the whole album, which isn't bad for a smooth jazz format. A lot of my favorites have guest spots on the album. Along with Mr. Mathis, there's Al Jarreau on "Think Twice," Evelyn "Champagne" King (remember her?) on "Hit Em High," and the album also features The Spinners and even Maurice White from the group Earth, Wind, and Fire. The great thing about iTunes is that you can audition 30 second clips (best done if you don't have dial-up still, like me), which vary in quality (sometimes they don't always start the clip at a good spot). So if you belong to the champagne crowd and don't think you'll enjoy the smooth-jazz vibe of Street Corner Prophecy, then you can just pick the songs you want. Don't you love the age we live in now? No more dead trees! Of course, if you need a physical copy of the CD, you can always find it at your favorite music repository.

ELLA AWARD The Society of Singer's 15th Annual ELLA Award to Johnny Mathis was somewhat overshadowed by the God-affirming news that singer Whitney Houston has finally left her husband! Here are several photos I found of the event. Wire Images has some shots, but these are meant for professional news organizations, and you have to subscribe to these. I must say that Johnny Mathis is looking fit and fabulous these days. He's got to be the best-looking 70-year-old man in the world! Anyway...

In the meantime, Jet Magazine has published a wonderful photo taken by Jet photographer Valerie Goodloe in their "Week's Best Photos" section, and embedded within Jet's article on Whitney's divorce, I was surprised to find comments such as the following that Mathis made about Whitney's impending comeback: "Every time I see somebody fighting back, I'm just thrilled. God gave her so much talent...then to have all her problems, she's still fighting back. I think she and Clive are going to make some wonderful recordings. This is a new beginning." Frankly, I think Clive and Johnny can make some wonderful recordings, too, especially that Brazilian one they've been sitting on forever! But anyway... Clearly, Johnny Mathis is proud and supportive of a woman he's probably known since her childhood. I personally thought it sad and disgraceful what became of one of the great voices of my lifetime, and I'm ever hopeful that she will be back on track now that she's unloaded a lot of excess baggage. So, congratulations Johnny Mathis on the award, and welcome back, Whitney!

Incidentally, Whitney's mother, legendary Emily "Cissy" Houston, shares a birthday with Johnny Mathis. Mrs. Houston turns 73, and Mr. Mathis turns 71, on September 30th.

As the beautiful poster on the Society of Singers website showed, the event was open to the public. You didn't have to be a singer or a member of the organization as long as you had the money! I would have loved to have attended! However, maybe a souvenir book is the next best thing. For $30 or so, souvenir books have been made available for each ELLA honoree for the last couple or three years or so. The website shows books still available for last year's honoree, Sir Elton John, and 2004's honoree, Celine Dion, and now they are available for this year's honoree, Johnny Mathis. I expect that it will be very popular. There was already one for sale on eBay from someone who went to the award show who no longer wanted theirs.

MATHIS IN BRITAIN With all the excitement from the Society of Singers honor, I completely forgot about the Wembley Arena show! Johnny Mathis performed at his own award show, which was unusual enough, he was the guest of honor, after all! And then to turn around and breathe pressurized air for several hours to get to Great Britain? Well, one could have excused him for being less than top form, but from the account of an attendee who generously shared her experience with me (her very first Johnny Mathis concert, no less!), he was stellar. She tells me the show was a sellout and that there was a diversity of age and nationality in the crowd, which pleases me no end! It's a shame his Irish show was cancelled, but I'm so happy Johnny Mathis was otherwise so well-received.

Apparently you can't please everyone, though. The way a review of the Wembley show written by John Aizlewood for the Evening Standard describes it, Mathis was to go on stage and talk about his entire 50-year career and how gay he is rather than sing! I think that would be a first for ANY artist; the writer seemed to grudgingly accept, finally, that a Mathis show was about the music, even though he addressed that aspect of the show as somewhat of an afterthought.

Now, anyone who's read the Mathis Chronicles and/or the Grapevine News & Views for the last eight years knows Johnny Mathis is gay, and anyone who has e-mailed me and asked has been told as much, point-blank. Mr. Aizlewood, then, isn't giving the people who know Mathis history anything new; but he's not giving the people who don't know Mathis much anything, either. There's nothing wrong with discussing homosexuality where Johnny Mathis or anybody else is concerned AS LONG AS it's in the right context. Johnny Mathis is a singer of romantic songs, after all; of course people who don't know about him are going to ask about it! He's a phenomenon who is loved the world over in spite of both his orientation and his race, and that's an accomplishment, not something to be ashamed of, at least not this day and age. It's just that the people who are curious can't understand why that is! I'll have more to say about that in a future News & Views.

But in the case of this article, however, I'm just trying to figure out what the reviewer was trying to say by even bringing it up. Did he really expect Johnny Mathis to talk about his love life at a concert? Would anybody? Was Johnny Mathis really "the first singer of his mainstream type to announce his homosexuality"? What in the world does that mean, anyway? I own a PDF of the infamous 1982 "coming out" article, and it wasn't exactly an announcement. Now, what Ellen DeGeneres did, THAT'S an announcement! So, I personally don't think it was so much inappropriate as it was just horrible writing. Whatever Mr. Aizlewood was trying to say, he just didn't do it very well. I suspect that this is a guy who was probably just told by his boss to cover the show, and he did minimal homework, and really seemed to just be fishing for something to put in to fill out his word count.

I take less exception to Mr. Aizlewood's allusion to Mathis' personal life than I do to the question of Mathis' tailoring! I vehemently question the idea that Mathis was badly-dressed or, as the reviewer put it, in an "ill-fitting suit". Now, I've been lucky enough to see my share of concerts and concert photos. Perhaps not as many as the old-timers who have been going to his shows since before I was born, but in the last seventeen years since I've been going to his shows I have NEVER seen Johnny Mathis in ANYTHING that fit him badly. Now, I have seen him in clothes that make me think what in the world was he thinking, i.e., the infamous lime-green suit, and whatever in the world was that he wore on Soul Train?! But ill-fitting? Johnny Mathis? Never. Ever.

So, I don't agree what the writer wrote about his clothing, and I don't know what the heck a "pedant" is. But, I'm reminded of the quote that goes something like, "I may not agree with what you say, but I'll fight for your right to say it." The Evening Standard review is only one writer's opinion; maybe some people agree with him, maybe some don't. Those who don't agree should respectfully write their own impressions of the show and send it to the paper. There is a place for comments for people who went to the show. One thing about it, though: Johnny Mathis is loved over there, very much so, just as he is here in America and all around the world. Just because one reviewer doesn't get it doesn't mean a crowd of 10,000 people didn't.

The lady who attended at Wembley wrote that there was such love and respect for Mathis at Wembley Arena, and afterwards they apparently devoured his CDs and DVDs like locusts in a cornfield. [Think how many he would sell this way if he were to self-publish!] And while there are no articles on the Birmingham show so far, here's a very informative and well written Manchester Evening News article about the return of Johnny Mathis to Britain. Think of it! Johnny Mathis has lost some of his hearing, and can still produce the most stellar notes in the universe with his voice! And, judging by the comments to the Manchester article, it seems Mathis was as well-received at the Manchester Evening News Arena as he was at Wembley! It would seem, then, that one writer's failure to convey the love and reverence the British people have for Johnny Mathis doesn't change the fact that the people who invested time and money and came in droves to fill one of the most famous venues in the world to capacity to see the last of a kind for what could be the last time liked what they heard and saw just fine.

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