Song #21: "It's Not for Me to Say" by Johnny Mathis

 

🎵 Today’s Song

Johnny Mathis — “It’s Not for Me to Say”
1957

Random draw

Selected era bucket: 1955–1959
Verified remaining eligible population: 9,054 recordings
Selection method: Equal-probability era draw, then one uniform random draw from previously unselected eligible recordings in that era

Chart performance

Overall pop peak: #5
Billboard Top 100: #5
Other relevant Billboard pop charts: #6 Best Sellers in Stores; #6 Most Played by Jockeys
Billboard R&B: N/A
Billboard Country: N/A
Canada: #2, CHUM Hit Parade
Yearly rank: #54 in the project’s canonical Extended workbook
Weeks charted: 34
Weeks Top 20: 17
Weeks Top 10: 4
Weeks at peak: 1

Chart note: Billboard’s contemporary year-end Top 100 ranked the song differently from the project’s canonical Extended methodology; the project uses the canonical workbook’s #54 yearly rank for consistency.

Johnny Mathis at this point

Charting record: 2nd of 43
Top-20 hit: 2nd of 10
Top-10 hit: 1st of 6
#1 pop hit: Not a #1; Mathis would eventually have 2
Previous Top-20: “Wonderful! Wonderful!”
Next Top-20: “Chances Are”

Chronology note: Project career chronology is based on initial chart-entry date. “Wonderful! Wonderful!” entered the chart before “It’s Not for Me to Say,” even though “It’s Not for Me to Say” actually reached the Top 20 first.

Retrospective standing

GOAT overall: N/A
Among Johnny Mathis songs: N/A
Among Johnny Mathis Top-20 hits: N/A
GOAT points: N/A
Hot 100 portion of chart run: N/A

Transition note: The entire original chart run occurred before Billboard introduced the Hot 100 on August 4, 1958, so the project’s Hot 100-based retrospective rankings do not apply.

Record details

Entered chart: April 29, 1957
Released: February 25, 1957
Recorded: September 1956 — New York City
Single: “It’s Not for Me to Say” / “Warm and Tender”
Album/soundtrack: Performed by Mathis in the 1957 MGM film Lizzie; later included on Johnny’s Greatest Hits (1958)
Songwriters: Robert Allen, Al Stillman
Lead vocal / featured performer: Johnny Mathis, with Ray Conniff and His Orchestra
Running time: approximately 3:03
Label: Columbia
Catalog number: 40851
Recording to use: The original 1956 Johnny Mathis recording with Ray Conniff and His Orchestra, released as the 1957 Columbia single

Listen / watch / read

🎧 Original recording: Johnny Mathis — “It’s Not for Me to Say” (original recording)

📺 Contemporary performance/promotional clips:
Mathis performing “Warm and Tender” and “It’s Not for Me to Say” in Lizzie (1957)
Mathis performing “It’s Not for Me to Say” live on The Ed Sullivan Show, June 16, 1957

📝 Lyrics: Licensed lyrics are available through major streaming services.

Versions & title history

Original or cover: Original hit recording

Later recordings include versions by Jane Morgan, Connie Francis and Paul Anka.

Same-title unrelated chart hits: None identified

Streaming note

There is no major version trap. Streaming services sometimes identify the original recording through later compilations or as “From the MGM Film Lizzie,” but the approximately three-minute recording with Ray Conniff and His Orchestra is the original hit master.

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Yesterday, this project gave me Pop Smoke.

Today it gave me Johnny Mathis.

That's about as much musical whiplash as a randomizer can provide, although the two artists have at least one unexpected thing in common. Both were discovered doing one kind of music and became much bigger stars after demonstrating that their appeal didn't have to remain confined to it. Pop Smoke emerged through Brooklyn drill before broadening his sound. Mathis was discovered singing jazz before Columbia Records figured out that his voice might have a much larger market singing romantic pop ballads.

That comparison probably ends there.

What surprised me considerably more was discovering that I had Johnny Mathis almost completely wrong.

Not musically. I knew what Johnny Mathis sounded like.

Historically.

Somewhere in my head, Johnny Mathis had become a pre-rock singer who simply lasted into the Rock Era. I would have placed him alongside the older pop establishment that was already there when Elvis Presley and rock and roll arrived.

Apparently, in my imagination, Johnny Mathis was also perpetually about 45 years old.

Neither thing is remotely true.

Mathis was 21 when “It’s Not for Me to Say” became a hit in 1957. His first album had only been released the previous year. His entire recording career belongs to the era this project defines as the Rock Era.

Johnny Mathis wasn't hanging around from the world before rock and roll.

Johnny Mathis was one of the new pop stars of 1957.

That distinction turned out to be the most interesting thing about today's song.

The jazz singer

Mathis didn't emerge from the traditional-pop world at all.

He had received years of serious vocal training, but when Columbia Records discovered him, he was singing jazz in San Francisco clubs. Helen Noga, co-owner of the Black Hawk, heard him at a jam session, became his manager and eventually persuaded George Avakian, Columbia's head of jazz A&R, to come hear him.

Avakian was sufficiently impressed to send Columbia a famous telegram describing Mathis as a phenomenal 19-year-old who could “go all the way.”

Columbia signed him as a jazz singer.

His first album, Johnny Mathis: A New Sound in Popular Song, didn't sell particularly well, and Columbia tried another direction. Mitch Miller paired Mathis's voice with romantic pop material, while Ray Conniff supplied the lush orchestral arrangements that would define his early hits.

At a September 1956 session, Mathis recorded “Wonderful! Wonderful!,” “When Sunny Gets Blue,” “Warm and Tender” and “It’s Not for Me to Say.”

And suddenly we have the Johnny Mathis I thought had existed all along.

That's the part I had backward. The polished romantic-ballad Mathis wasn't a survivor from the pre-rock pop establishment.

Columbia created that version of Johnny Mathis in the middle of the rock-and-roll explosion.

Selling Johnny Mathis

“It’s Not for Me to Say,” written by Robert Allen and Al Stillman, was released in February 1957, and the push behind it makes Mathis's actual position in the marketplace particularly clear.

He was put into the MGM movie Lizzie, a psychological drama starring Eleanor Parker and based on Shirley Jackson's The Bird's Nest. Mathis isn't really a character. He's simply the singer in a tavern, performing “Warm and Tender” and “It’s Not for Me to Say” while the movie continues around him.

It's almost a proto-music video embedded inside an unrelated movie. There's no particular story reason the tavern singer needs to be 21-year-old Columbia recording artist Johnny Mathis performing his new single.

It's cross-promotion, and not especially subtle cross-promotion.

But Lizzie was only part of the push. Columbia worked Mathis through trade advertising, disc jockeys and radio, and on June 16 he performed “It’s Not for Me to Say” live on The Ed Sullivan Show.

This wasn't an established adult singer being kept alive by an older audience.

Columbia was launching a young pop star.

And it worked.

The breakthrough in the middle

Before researching this, I thought of “It’s Not for Me to Say” as the forgotten middle entry in a three-song sequence.

“Wonderful! Wonderful!” was the beginning.

“It’s Not for Me to Say” was the one in between.

“Chances Are” was the big finish.

Except that's not really what happened.

“Wonderful! Wonderful!” was released first and entered the charts first, but it moved slowly. “It’s Not for Me to Say” caught on more quickly, reached the Top 20 first and ultimately climbed to #5.

That produces a weird little wrinkle in this project's statistics. I order an artist's hits by their initial chart-entry date, so “Wonderful! Wonderful!” is technically Mathis's first Top-20 hit here and “It’s Not for Me to Say” his second.

But in real time, today's song actually reached the Top 20 first.

Its success also appears to have helped generate renewed interest in “Wonderful! Wonderful!,” which was still hanging around the chart.

Then Robert Allen and Al Stillman wrote another song for Mathis because “It’s Not for Me to Say” had done so well.

That song was “Chances Are.”

It went to #1.

So today's supposedly forgotten middle record turns out to be something closer to the hinge. It helped establish Mathis, boosted interest in the record that preceded it and led directly to the biggest record of his young career.

And apparently it isn't particularly forgotten.

Current Spotify numbers have “It’s Not for Me to Say” at roughly 38 million streams, more than twice the total for “Wonderful! Wonderful!” “Chances Are” is higher still.

So my belief that “Wonderful! Wonderful!” had substantially outlived today's song wasn't really a statement about cultural memory.

It was a statement about my memory.

I simply like “Wonderful! Wonderful!” more.

A teenage pop idol who doesn't sound like one

That's where my larger misconception about Mathis became interesting.

I had mentally categorized Johnny Mathis as adult music.

It's easy to hear why. Ray Conniff's orchestra, Mathis's immaculate diction, the suits, the romantic ballads—none of it resembles the version of teenage rebellion that dominates our memory of popular music in the late 1950s.

But we've allowed what this music sounds like now to tell us who it was for then.

Mathis was 21, handsome, appearing in movies and on Ed Sullivan, being pushed through radio and singles and becoming a national star in exactly the years when we imagine American teenagers turning toward rock and roll.

Teenagers were part of his audience too.

That's important because the easy version of this history would be that teenagers were buying Elvis and other rock-and-roll records while their parents were buying Johnny Mathis.

The marketplace wasn't divided that neatly.

The same young audience participating in the rock-and-roll explosion could also embrace a 21-year-old Johnny Mathis singing romantic ballads over Ray Conniff's orchestra.

Mathis wasn't simply adult music that teenagers tolerated.

He was a young pop idol whose music adults could buy too.

Our later genre labels obscure that. We classify Mathis as traditional pop or easy listening, and then unconsciously move his original audience into those categories with him.

I did exactly that.

Johnny Mathis sounded like adult music to me, so I mentally turned the 21-year-old Johnny Mathis into an adult singer performing for adults.

I had the music right.

I had the historical context almost completely wrong.

The singer is better than the song

None of this changes the actual record very much for me.

Mathis obviously has a tremendous voice. Watching his live Ed Sullivan performance gave me a better opportunity to notice some of the details—the clean diction, the restraint and particularly how full he keeps the lower part of his range—but the quality of the singer wasn't exactly news.

The song is another matter.

The lyric is remarkably low-stakes. Mathis seems to have just begun a relationship. He likes the person. Things seem promising. Maybe it will turn into love. Maybe it won't.

Even the title is a hedge.

There isn't a conventional chorus, either. The song belongs much more to the older popular-standard tradition, where the composition can unfold continuously rather than moving through the verse-chorus structure later pop listeners expect.

It feels like a standard.

That's not an insult. The song is portable in a way many later pop records aren't. Give the melody and lyric to another singer and arranger and you still have a perfectly functional composition.

But there just isn't much here that makes me want to return to this particular one.

It's pleasant.

It's beautifully sung.

It's polished almost to a mirror finish.

And it mostly just...is.

That's especially noticeable because I like “Wonderful! Wonderful!” and “Chances Are.” I already have Johnny Mathis in my favorites.

So this isn't a Johnny Mathis problem.

It's an “It’s Not for Me to Say” problem.

How Johnny Mathis became 45

There may be a reason my mental picture of Mathis was so far off.

He became an institution almost immediately.

In 1958, barely a year after his first hit, Columbia released Johnny's Greatest Hits. It was only his fourth album. It reached #1 and ultimately spent 490 weeks on Billboard's album chart, a longevity record that stood until Pink Floyd's The Dark Side of the Moon finally passed it decades later.

That's enough to distort anyone's sense of chronology.

Mathis's youthful pop-idol phase was quickly swallowed by an extraordinarily long career as a romantic singer. Eventually, cultural memory compressed all of those versions of Johnny Mathis into the one I knew—the guy who apparently had been 45 years old since 1957.

But today's record catches him before that happened.

This isn't an established easy-listening star surviving the arrival of rock and roll.

It's a 21-year-old new pop singer being launched right in the middle of it.

That's the part of “It’s Not for Me to Say” I'll probably remember.

The Rock Era didn't begin with everyone suddenly listening to rock. In 1957, Columbia could create a brand-new young pop idol singing lush Ray Conniff ballads, and teenagers could embrace him right alongside the new rock stars.

Unfortunately, none of that makes me like the song much more.

44/100

The research dramatically changed my understanding of Johnny Mathis without dramatically changing my opinion of this Johnny Mathis song.

There is nothing obviously wrong with it. It's beautifully performed, professionally arranged and extremely pleasant.

I just don't particularly want to hear it again.

The lyric doesn't give me much to grab onto. The song never produces much drama. For all of the craftsmanship involved, it lands for me as exceptionally polished lounge music.

And because I already like other Johnny Mathis songs, I don't have to wonder whether I'm simply rejecting the singer or the style.

I'm not.

This one just doesn't resonate with me.

44/100.

Tough break, Johnny.

You're 21 years old. You've just become a national celebrity. Your record is headed to #5, and Robert Allen and Al Stillman are about to bring you “Chances Are.”

It'll get better, Johnny.