The hardest thing I've ever done is keep believing

Continuing my trip back through the 1959 album charts.

18/01/59 : Swing Softly - Johnny Mathis


Skipping over six weeks, this is our fourth visit with Mr Mathis and whilst I haven't always loved the musical content, there's no denying the man had a lovely voice and as an African-American in the 50s, he must have had to work so hard for his success - I'm looking forward to seeing what we've got here.

Yeah, this is pretty decent - it is, as the title suggests, somewhere between swinging and crooning and he really does have a lovely voice, over some nicely minimal but effective arrangements. "Like Someone In Love" is particularly gorgeous and the breath control he shows on it is very impressive. I was less convinced by the somewhat strange version of "I'm Getting Married In The Morning" but generally these are decent tracks done very well - I enjoyed this.

We're at #10 with a new entry in the chart this week on the start of a huge one week run, with it never having been seen again. The top five in the chart this week were South Pacific, My Fair Lady, (not Gigi!), Elvis Presley, Frank Sinatra and the Oh Boy! soundtrack and we have one more new entry in the chart for the West Side Story soundtrack (#9).

Wikipedia tells us this is his fifth album and is different from his usual ballads, being "uptempo arrangements of popular standards", so it's surprising how few I recognised. And that's about I've got for you really!

"Customers also listened to" Patti Page, Eddy Arnold, Robert Goulet and Peggy Lee - I've at least heard of Peggy. but that's it, I'm afraid. I do like a bit of Johnny Mathis though and this is fine example of him doing something slightly different - it's definitely one of the better albums of the year. 

And with that, we're done - the second half of the year (four albums, but the last three were contenders for the best albums we heard) was considerably quicker than the first (seventeen)! My plan now is to move forward one decade at a time picking the year furthest away from any previously picked year, so next we'll be heading to '64 or '65 - I imagine you're already on the edge of your seat waiting to find out where we end up!

1959 - Our first decade completed
15/03/59 - Surprisingly enjoyable

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