Although he’s been associated with Columbia Records for most of his lengthy career, golden-voiced pop legend Johnny Mathis had a four-year stint partnering with Mercury in the mid-’60s.
During this brief but extremely productive period, Mathis formed his own production company called Global Records and, operating it as a Mercury imprint, released a string of ten albums between 1963 and 1967. Beginning with his second Christmas LP The Sounds of Christmas, he assumed the then unfamiliar role of producer, branching out with a number of unusual choices like his 1965 Spanish-language album Olé, and the ambitious, internationally flavored The Sweetheart Tree from the same year. While it was an important period for him creatively, little of his Global output yielded…
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…much commercial success and in late 1967, he returned to Columbia reclaiming a spot in the Billboard Top 20 with his Up, Up, and Away LP. Over the years, there have been spotty reissues from his Global era, but 2014’s massive 13-disc set The Complete Global Albums Collection contains literally his entire discography from that period and then some. Along with the ten original studio albums, each of which contains exclusive liner notes from the artist, there are two additional bonus albums. The first is a lost record of formerly unreleased show tunes called Broadway. Rounding out the collection is a two-disc set of non-album singles and other unreleased cuts. One of pop’s most enduring icons, Mathis remains known for his romantic and unusual vocal delivery. His appeal has crossed generations, but this exhaustive set from the tumultuous ’60s represents a unique and exploratory time in his career.