Early Years: Selected Albums 1956-58
Johnny Mathis
Early Years: Selected Albums 1956–58 is a forty-six-track, two-CD compilation on the Acrobat label, released in May/June 2026, drawing almost entirely from Johnny Mathis's first four studio albums for Columbia Records: Johnny Mathis (1956), Wonderful, Wonderful (1957), Warm (1957), and Swing Softly (1958). The collection captures the San Francisco-born tenor at the very start of what would become one of the most sustained careers in American popular music — he was still a much-loved figure at 90 as the liner notes were being written. His debut album, produced by Columbia's George Avakian with jazz-oriented arrangements by Gil Evans, Ted Macero, Bob Prince, and John Lewis, presented Mathis as a jazz-inflected vocalist, but it failed to chart. Columbia executive Mitch Miller subsequently rebranded him as a pop balladeer, pairing him with conductor-arrangers Percy Faith, Ray Conniff, and others, and the results were immediate: by 1957 Mathis was scoring Top 10 hits and landing consecutive Top 10 albums that would continue through 1960.
The forty-six tracks span the full stylistic arc of those early years, moving from the jazz-flavored debut material — "Autumn in Rome," "Easy to Love," "Prelude to a Kiss," "Angel Eyes," "Caravan," and "In Other Words (Fly Me to the Moon)" — through the lush, string-drenched pop balladry of Wonderful, Wonderful and Warm, and into the lighter-swing sensibility of Swing Softly, with its standout readings of "Like Someone in Love," "You'd Be So Nice to Come Home To," "Love Walked In," and "I've Got the World on a String." As Trapeze Music's liner notes describe it, the collection offers "a thoroughly enjoyable showcase for his unique talent, captured at the start of what would be a long and illustrious career." The set effectively documents the transformation from the tentative jazz-pop of Mathis's debut to the fully realized, warmly intimate sound that would make Johnny's Greatest Hits (1958) — widely regarded as the original greatest-hits album — one of the longest-charting records in Billboard history.
Early Years: Selected Albums 1956-58
Johnny Mathis
Early Years: Selected Albums 1956–58 is a forty-six-track, two-CD compilation on the Acrobat label, released in May/June 2026, drawing almost entirely from Johnny Mathis's first four studio albums for Columbia Records: Johnny Mathis (1956), Wonderful, Wonderful (1957), Warm (1957), and Swing Softly (1958). The collection captures the San Francisco-born tenor at the very start of what would become one of the most sustained careers in American popular music — he was still a much-loved figure at 90 as the liner notes were being written. His debut album, produced by Columbia's George Avakian with jazz-oriented arrangements by Gil Evans, Ted Macero, Bob Prince, and John Lewis, presented Mathis as a jazz-inflected vocalist, but it failed to chart. Columbia executive Mitch Miller subsequently rebranded him as a pop balladeer, pairing him with conductor-arrangers Percy Faith, Ray Conniff, and others, and the results were immediate: by 1957 Mathis was scoring Top 10 hits and landing consecutive Top 10 albums that would continue through 1960.
The forty-six tracks span the full stylistic arc of those early years, moving from the jazz-flavored debut material — "Autumn in Rome," "Easy to Love," "Prelude to a Kiss," "Angel Eyes," "Caravan," and "In Other Words (Fly Me to the Moon)" — through the lush, string-drenched pop balladry of Wonderful, Wonderful and Warm, and into the lighter-swing sensibility of Swing Softly, with its standout readings of "Like Someone in Love," "You'd Be So Nice to Come Home To," "Love Walked In," and "I've Got the World on a String." As Trapeze Music's liner notes describe it, the collection offers "a thoroughly enjoyable showcase for his unique talent, captured at the start of what would be a long and illustrious career." The set effectively documents the transformation from the tentative jazz-pop of Mathis's debut to the fully realized, warmly intimate sound that would make Johnny's Greatest Hits (1958) — widely regarded as the original greatest-hits album — one of the longest-charting records in Billboard history.