#8: A Certain Smile by Johnny Mathis

City: Hull, QC
Radio Station: CKCH
Peak Month: October 1958
Peak Position in Hull ~ #1
Peak position in Vancouver ~ #7
Peak Position on Cashbox Top 100 Best Sellers ~ #14
YouTube: “A Certain Smile”
Lyrics: “A Certain Smile”

Johnny Mathis was born in Gilmer (TX) in 1935. His family moved to San Francisco when he was 5-years-old. His father was a vaudeville singer and piano player. Mathis began learning songs and routines from his father. Mathis’ first song was “My Blue Heaven”. He started singing and dancing for visitors at home, at school, and at church functions. When Mathis was 13, voice teacher Connie Cox accepted him as her student in exchange for housework. Mathis studied with Cox for six years, learning vocal scales and exercises, voice production, classical and operatic singing. In 1955, Mathis got a job singing weekends at Ann Dee’s 440 Club in San Francisco.

Concurrently, At San Francisco State, Mathis had become noteworthy as a high jumper, and in 1956, he was asked to try out for the U.S. Olympic Team that would travel to Melbourne that November. But given Johnny Mathis had received an offer of a record contract from Columbia Records, on his father’s advice, Mathis opted to embark on a professional singing career.

On December 1, 1958, Johnny Mathis was photographed by the Associated Press high jumping, a sport he was pretty good in while attending San Francisco State College.

In July 1956, Johnny Mathis’ debut album, Johnny Mathis, was a slow-selling jazz album. He performed at night clubs in Manhattan. Near the end of the year he recorded “Wonderful Wonderful!” and “It’s Not For Me To Say”. The song was inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame in 2008. It was also featured in the 1957 film noir movie Lizzie, where Mathis was cast as a piano player and singer. Later in 1957, “Chances Are” became his biggest selling hit and was inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame in 1998. It was number-one on October 21, 1957, on the Billboard Most Played by Jockeys chart. The B-side, “The Twelfth Of Never” was also a Top Ten hit in 1957. In 1958, “Wild Is The Wind” was the theme song from the movie of the same name. For his performance, Mathis received an Academy Award nomination for Best Original Song in 1958, where he also sang the song at the event.

In March 1958, Columbia Records released Johnny’s Greatest Hits. The album reached number-one and remained on the Billboard pop album chart for 490 weeks, almost nine-and-a-half years. He was again a guest on The Ed Sullivan Show on October 26, 1958, singing “Sweet Lorraine”. In the summer of 1958, Johnny Mathis released “A Certain Smile”, the theme song from the film of the same name.

“A Certain Smile” was cowritten by Paul Francis Webster and Sammy Fain. Paul Francis Webster was born in 1907 in New York City. Like Sammy Fain, his family was Jewish. He worked on ships throughout Asia and then became a dance instructor at an Arthur Murray studio in New York City. By 1931, however, he turned his career direction to writing song lyrics. In 1932, “Masquerade” was a #3 hit for Ted Black and His Orchestra. The following year, “The Whisper Waltz” was a #6 hit for Rudy Vallee. In 1934, “Two Cigarettes in The Dark” was a Top Ten hit for numbers of recording artists, with versions by Johnny Green, and Bing Crosby the most successful. In 1945, Betty Hutton had a number-one hit with “Doctor, Lawyer, Indian Chief”. While in 1951, Mario Lanza had a #3 hit with “The Loveliest Night of the Year”. Webster had a #3 hit for Pat Boone in 1957 titled “Friendly Persuasion”. Another Top Ten hit was “Twelfth of Never” for Johnny Mathis, also in ’57. And in 1966, Webster co-wrote “Somewhere My Love”, a Top Ten hit for Ray Conniff. He also co-wrote several big hits with Sammy Fain. Paul Francis Webster died in 1984 at the age of 76.

Fain was born in Samuel E. Feinberg in New York City in 1902. Roger Wolfe and His Orchestra had a #6 hit in 1928 with “Let A Smile Be Your Umbrella”. In 1929, Gene Austin had a Top Ten hit with “Wedding Bells are Breaking Up that Old Gang of Mine”. In 1930, Paul Whitman and his Orchestra had a #3 hit with “You Brought a New Kind of Love to Me”. In 1931, the Boswell Sisters had a #6 hit with “When I Take My Sugar to Tea”. In 1932, Fain witnessed more of his hits make the Top Ten for Johnny Hamp & His Orchestra (“Hummin’ To Myself”), and the Boswell Sisters “(Was That the Human Thing to Do?”). In 1933, “By The Waterfall” was a #6 hit for both Guy Lombardo and His Royal Canadians, and also Leo Reisman and His Orchestra. In 1935, Victor Young and His Orchestra had a Top Ten hit with “Ev’ry Day”, and in 1937 “Our Penthouse on Third Avenue” was a Top Ten hit for Ozzie Nelson and His Orchestra.

Fain had his first song reach number-one, when in 1937 Shep Fields and His Orchestra had a chart-topper with “That Old Feeling”. Other hits of the late ’30s include “The Moon is a Silver Dollar” for Lawrence Welk and His Orchestra, and “Who Blew Out the Flame?” for Dolly Dawn and Her Dawn Patrol. Fain had his second number-one hit when Bing Crosby recorded “I’ll Be Seeing You” in 1944. “The Dickey-Bird Song” was a Top 5 hit in 19488 for Freddy Martin and His Orchestra, and in 1949 “Dear Hearts and Gentle People” was a #2 hit for both Bing Crosby and also Dinah Shore. In the winter of 1949-50, the Andrew Sisters revived a Top 5 hit for Tommy Dorsey, “I Can Dream Can’t I” which peaked at #1. But it was in 1954 that Sammy Fain had his biggest hit record when Doris Day recorded “Secret Love”, his fourth appearance as a lyricist at number-one. He was back at #1 in 1955 when the Four Aces recorded “Love Is a Many-Splendored Thing”. Fain and Webster co-wrote “Secret Love” and “Love Is a Many-Splendored Thing”. And in 1957, Fain had his sixth and final number-one hit with Pat Boone’s recording of “April Love”. Fain died of a heart attack at the age of 87 in 1989.

“A Certain Smile” peaked at #1 in Hull (QC) and Burlington (VT), #2 in Albany (NY), #3 in Bethesda (MD) and Washington DC, #4 in London (ON) and Pittsburgh, #5 in Baton Rouge (LA) and Memphis, #6 in Montreal, Seattle, and San Francisco, #7 in Ottawa, Denver, and Vancouver (BC), #10 in Toronto, Allentown (PA), and Troy (NY), #11 in Buffalo, Boston, and Los Angeles, #12 in Baltimore, and #13 in New York City.

That winter his Christmas album featured the track, “Winter Wonderland”, which became a Top 20 hit in the UK.

In 1959, Johnny Mathis recorded “Misty”. The song later was inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame in 2002. His other Top 20 hit of the year was “Small World”. On April 26, 1959, and November 8, 1959, Johnny Mathis appeared again on The Ed Sullivan Show.

In 1960, Johnny Mathis released a version of the hit song from West Side Story, “Maria”, which was a minor hit. This was followed by “My Love For You”.

On October 16, 1960, Johnny Mathis appeared on See American with Ed Sullivan: San Francisco performing the Frank Sinatra album hit “Come Dance With Me”. He was back on The Ed Sullivan Show on November 26, 1961, and April 29, 1962. After “Misty”, Johnny Mathis went three years without having a Top 20 hit across the USA. It was his recording of “Gina” in the winter of 1962 that took him to #6. He remained on the pop charts into 1963 with “What Will Mary Say?”, which peaked at #9 on the Billboard Hot 100 that March.
Later that year, “Every Step Of The Way” was his last To 40 hit until 1978.

Between 1957 and 1963, Johnny Mathis had 14 Top Ten albums, including ten studio albums and four greatest hits albums.

On November 12, 1967, Mathis sang “Up, Up and Away” on The Ed Sullivan Show. On January 21, 1968, and January 5, 1969,  Johnny Mathis was again a guest on The Ed Sullivan Show. On November 22, 1970, Johnny Mathis returned as a guest on The Ed Sullivan Show to sing “My Funny Valentine”.

In 1975, Mathis recorded a cover of the Stylistics song “I’m Stoned In Love With You”. It climbed to #8 in Ireland and #10 in the UK. In the winter of 1976, Mathis had a number-one hit for three weeks in the UK with “When A Child Is Born”. In 1978, Johnny Mathis continued his comeback with a number-one hit in a duet with Deniece Williams titled “Too Much, Too Little, Too Late”. In 2003, he was given a Lifetime Achievement Award at the Grammys. In 2013, Mathis had a #4 hit on the Billboard Adult Contemporary chart with “Sending You a Little Christmas”.

Over the decades Johnny Mathis appeared on The Tonight Show on 54 occasions, variously with Jack Paar, Johnny Carson and Jay Leno. To date, Johnny Mathis has appeared in concert in Canada on 48 occasions. This includes concert dates in Niagara Falls, Orillia, Toronto, Ottawa, and Windsor (ON), Richmond, Coquitlam and Vancouver (BC), Montreal and Quebec City (QC), and Edmonton (AB).

In 2015, a fire engulfed and destroyed his home in the Hollywood Hills. And in 2023, a hillside beside his home collapsed and crushed his Jaguar. Mathis is the third best-selling artist of the 20th century, selling 360 million records worldwide. He disclosed in an interview in 1982 that he was ‘gay.’ But the publicity led to death threats and he made no more public statements about his sexuality for several decades.

Mathis continues to tour into the fall and winter of 2024. According to setlist.fm Johnny Mathis had appeared in concert in Canada on 48 occasions. This included appearances in Edmonton (AB), Coquitlam, Richmond, and Vancouver (BC), Niagara Falls, Orillia, Ottawa, Toronto, and Windsor (ON), Montreal and Quebec City (QC). His first concert dates in Canada were a 7-night stand at the El Morocco in Montreal from June 9 to 15, 1958.

In September 2024, Johnny Mathis turned 89.

November 6, 2024
Ray McGinnis

References:
“We weren’t poor, we just didn’t have any money,” American Academy of Achievement, 2011.
Karen Heller, “Johnny Mathis, the Voice of the 50s, was always ahead of his time, now he’s ready to talk about it,” Washington Post, August 2, 2018.
Leanne Suter, “Fire tears through singer Johnny Mathis’ Hollywood Hills home,” ABC, November 2, 2015.
Leanne Suter, “Hillside collapses in front of Johnny Mathis’ Hollywood Hills home, crushes singer’s Jaguar,” ABC, January 18, 2023.
Steven Gaydos, “Johnny Mathis remembers his jazz roots,” Variety, January 4, 2019.
“Johnny Mathis concert dates – Canada,” setlist.fm.
“Sammy Fain,” discogs.com.
“Top Hollywood Lyricist Won Three Oscars: His “Shadow of Your Smile” won both Grammy and Oscar for Best Song,” Songwriters’ Hall of Fame.

CKCH 970-AM Hull (QC) Top Ten | October 25, 1958