Country Johnny Mathis
Country Johnny Mathis (1930–2011) was a singer and songwriter from Texas who recorded as half of the duo Jimmy & Johnny with Jimmy Lee Fautheree and on his own from 1949 into the late 1960s. Jimmy & Johnny’s “If You Don’t, Somebody Else Will” was a top-five country hit in 1954, and his “Please Talk to My Heart,” written with Fautheree, charted for him in 1963 and for Ray Price in 1964.
John Mathis was born on 28 September 1930 in Maud, Texas. He made his first record in Dallas in the summer of 1949, singing and playing steel guitar on “Tell Me Why” and “Before You Call” for the Talent label, with Riley Crabtree on guitar, and he cut four sides for J-B in Fort Worth in 1951.
With Fautheree he first recorded for Capitol in Nashville on 6 March 1952, with Chet Atkins on guitar. In late May 1954, at J. D. Miller’s studio in Crowley, Louisiana, the pair cut “If You Don’t, Somebody Else Will” for Feature, and on 14 June they recut it at the KWKH studio in Shreveport for Chess, which issued it that August; it reached No. 4 on the country chart. The duo were regulars on the Louisiana Hayride and also appeared on the Big D Jamboree. Fautheree’s brother Lynn sang in Mathis’s place on several Decca sessions between 1955 and 1957, but Mathis was back for the duo’s records for D in Houston in 1958 and 1959 and for Republic in Nashville in late 1960. The two reunited in 1995 for a gospel single, “It Won’t Be Much Longer.”
On his own he recorded duets with Les Chambers for Starday at Jim Beck’s studio in Dallas in 1955, and from 1957 he worked at Gold Star in Houston for the producer Pappy Daily, whose sessions produced singles on Mercury-Starday and D; in 1958 he cut “Rock-a-My-Baby” and “Bee Boppin’ Daddy” there under the name Les Cole with the Echoes. From early 1959 his D singles were credited to Country Johnny Mathis, the name that kept him apart from the pop singer Johnny Mathis. He moved to United Artists in Nashville in 1961, and “Please Talk to My Heart,” recorded in October 1962, reached No. 14 on Billboard’s country singles chart in 1963. Ray Price’s version went to No. 7 in 1964, and Freddy Fender recorded it in 1980. From 1965 he recorded for Hilltop, Stampede and Little Darlin’, mostly with the producer Aubrey Mayhew, and much of that work was gospel.
He was credited with writing more than 400 songs, and his songs were recorded by George Jones, Tammy Wynette, Johnny Paycheck, Charley Pride, Webb Pierce, the Whites and Elvis Costello, among others, and late in his life the Kenny & Amanda Smith Band and Jim Lauderdale recorded his songs as well. Through the 1970s, 1980s and 1990s he mostly wrote and sang gospel music. He died at home on 27 September 2011, the day before his eighty-first birthday, in Cornersville, Tennessee.
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Jimmy Martin and the Sunny Mountain BoysPlayed on recording with Jimmy Martin and the Sunny Mountain Boys
