Singing the praises of Johnny Mathis

MY MOTHER loves Johnny Mathis. In my family, this is notable because my mother is not the fan type at all. Born in blue-collar New Orleans, she has an almost congenital indifference to famous people. She likes pop music and is fond of many songs, but that never translated into liking musicians or following their careers or, God forbid, going to concerts. (As teenagers, we always got a stock response to our occasional, frantic attempts to score tickets to a concert. “David Bowie?” she would say scornfully. “I wouldn’t go see David Bowie if he was playing in the front yard!”)

Johnny Mathis was the exception. My mother almost never misses getting tickets to his concerts in Las Vegas, even if it means crawling back to L.A. in Sunday night traffic on Interstate 15. It’s worth it, she says. She declares openly that she loves his voice, a high but robust tenor that has persisted through the decades and has never strayed into the various excesses of R&B; that my mother decidedly does not like.

Mathis for her is the golden antidote to the gospel-tinged histrionics of icons such as Wilson Pickett, Otis Redding and Aretha Franklin. “He doesn’t do all ... that,” she says emphatically. “Johnny Mathis is so classy. He stands there and sings. Just sings.”

Showmanship without showiness is something my mother deeply admires, something she thinks the world needs more of. She points to Mathis’ persona as more evidence of the virtue of containment -- low key, grateful, given to few words. And matinee-idol looks to boot, still pretty well preserved at age 71. A rare breed.

I realize now that Mathis means a lot to my mother in part because they grew up together. He made his first record in 1956, the year she got married. He was a young man -- then only 20 years old -- headed for a career as an Olympic high-jumper, but took another road. My mother, then not long out of bobby socks, had recently taken the road of marriage and family.

Mathis was a successful but lonely-guy crooner who perfectly articulated the romance not just of love but of all the uncharted possibilities of life with hits such as “Chances Are,” “Wonderful, Wonderful!” and “Misty” (the three songs that Mathis himself calls the “holy trinity”). As a black singer, he survived the often bumpy transition from the melodic style of the ‘50s to the rawer styles of the ‘60s and ‘70s by not making the transition at all. Even in the late ‘70s pop duet with Deniece Williams, “Too Much, Too Little, Too Late,” he remained quintessentially Johnny Mathis -- earnest, precise, pure of voice.

Consistency through changing circumstances -- also known as being true to yourself -- is what defines my mother as well. Las Vegas has long been her vacation destination of choice (it has some charms beyond Johnny Mathis); she doesn’t entertain ideas about going to Paris. She has two favorite kinds of chocolates from See’s Candies and tolerates the rest. She shops every Saturday afternoon because that’s the time she set aside for herself long ago, wandering time away from home. It is a ritual that has become more, not less, inviolable over the years as the kids grew up.

Johnny Mathis has resonance in my family beyond my mother. One of my brothers has been singing since he was a teenager. He absorbed all the soulmeisters growing up -- the Temps, Stevie Wonder, Harold Melvin -- but always came back to Mathis as a model. It helps that my brother resembles him somewhat and that he shares that almost contradictory mix of performance sense and modesty.

My father, meanwhile, knew Mathis’ brother, Clem, years ago, and family lore has it that he almost succeeded in wangling an introduction to Johnny. My mother still sounds disappointed talking about the chance that got away.

I don’t blame her. Johnny Mathis is a senior citizen now. His distinct ease with different material aligns him more with Sammy Davis Jr. and Nat King Cole than with contemporaries like James Brown, which means he’s truly one of the last of his kind. He has survived many in the musical generation that came after him -- modernists like Rick James, Curtis Mayfield, Teddy Pendergrass and Gerald Levert.

Like all of them, Mathis has a sound that’s uniquely his. That sound assured his legacy long ago, though as long as Johnny himself produces it, my mother will go miles to hear it.

ekaplan@latimescolumnists.com