Johnny Mathis talks duets, jazz, family and more in advance of his Palace Theatre show

At 86, singer Johnny Mathis would be within his rights to put down the microphone and call it quits.

The much-loved vocalist first bewitched listeners in the 1950s with his chart-topping, smooth-as-silk recordings of the romantic songs “Chances Are” and “The Twelfth of Never.”

Now, two years into the pandemic, Mathis has resumed live touring. As part of the “Voice of Romance Tour,” Mathis will perform Thursday in the Palace Theatre.

Throughout his career, Mathis — a native of Texas who was raised and attended school in San Francisco — has been a picture of professional stability: He stands as the artist with the longest-ever association with Columbia Records — which released his first album, “Johnny Mathis: A New Sound in Popular Song,” in 1956 and his most recent, “Johnny Mathis Sings the Great New American Songbook,” in 2017 — and, in between his time in the studio, has been consistently in demand as a touring artist.

Yet, although Mathis will turn 87 in September, he has live shows scheduled through the fall, and in a recent phone interview with The Dispatch, he gave no indication of setting down that mic any time soon.

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Question: You’ve been making records for 66 years. Does it feel like that many years?

Mathis: I keep wondering where all my friends and the people that I recorded with when I first started (went). I left San Francisco when I was about 19, I guess, and went to New York all by myself and met extraordinary people, some of them in the business and some of them were not. Mostly, I remember the love and affection that I got from the people in charge of music at Columbia Records.

I’ve been blessed. The thing that I remember most is my dad. My dad was my best pal. He and my mom had seven kids. I sang, my dad sang and that was where it all started. The thing that I’ve really loved the most about what happened to me is that my dad got a chance to see it happen. (My parents) never stopped working — that’s all they did is work, work, work, work, work — and then to have my success come along, when he was young and still viable, and he got a chance to talk to his friends and what have you. They said, “Didn’t I see your son singing on television?”

Q: Did any of your six siblings take to music?

Mathis: We all sort of sang and played the piano a little bit. (Johnny is fourth of the seven Mathis children.) They all just sort of went their way, and most of them got married and had kids. I just sort of left school, and I was mostly concerned about my athletics at the time. I was a high jumper and a hurdler, and I got a chance to go with a wonderful, world-famous basketball player, Bill Russell, to the Olympic trials as a high jumper. He went to USF (the University of San Francisco), I went to San Francisco State (University), and we became pals.

Q: Was it a tough choice to forego athletics for your music career?

Mathis: No. . . . My dad was absolutely over the moon at my little accomplishments as a singer, because he was a singer. He’s the person that I listened to and tried to emulate.

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Q: Did the people you were working with at Columbia early on immediately connect your voice with love songs?

Mathis: No, not at all. The guy who heard me sing was (Columbia Records producer) George Avakian. He was an Armenian man, and the lady who owned the jazz club in San Francisco, the Black Hawk, was Armenian, and she heard me sing with a golfing buddy of mine in her club one day. I think we were just fooling around in the afternoon when there were no customers. She heard me sing and (said), “Who’s your manager, honey?”

“I’ve got no manager! I go to school, I’ve got six brothers and sisters.” It was all very accidental.

(Avakian) was the head of jazz music for Columbia Records. (The jazz-club owner) called him up, and he came in one day, heard me sing, and said, “I think you’ve got a career ahead of you and we’ll see what happens. And he said, “I’ll be back next year.” “Oh, sure!” . . . Sure enough, he came through, and here I am.

Q: So it was jazz music you were paired with originally?

Mathis: When I signed, George and I made an album. . . . We did an album called “A New Sound in Popular Song.” It was all with jazz musicians, and that’s sort of how it started. Then this guy by the name of Mitch Miller, who was the head of pop music at Columbia Records, heard me sing and he said, “Why are you singing that stuff?” He didn’t say “stuff” — he said a dirty word — but he thought I was wasting my time singing that.

Q: You’ve also done six Christmas albums, starting with “Merry Christmas” in 1958.

Mathis: Christmas was the biggest thing in the world for (my family). That’s when we celebrated, and the first thing I wanted to do after I had a hit record was I wanted to make a Christmas album. And boy, oh boy, I was so lucky to get (arranger) Percy Faith and all these wonderful musicians.

Q: In the movie “Same Time, Next Year,” you and Jane Olivor sang a duet composed by Marvin Hamlisch, “The Last Time I Felt Like This,” which received an Oscar nomination in 1979.

Mathis: I love Jane Olivor! She’s one of the great singers of all time, and she and I are best pals. The joy I got — and I think most singers will probably feel the same way — is singing in tandem, with other people.

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Q: Do you ever listen to your old recordings and think you wish you had sung it differently, or feel you hit it out of the park?

Mathis: I listen to some of the early stuff and think about how dumb I was and how silly I was vocally. Because I had this wonderful voice teacher, and she was very, very strict: “Do this, do that, do this, do that.” And then, of course, when you start to get involved with music and putting your emotions into songs, all the technique goes out the window. You get emotional, and that’s the way the songs come out. So many times I would come back home after having success with songs like “Chances Are” and “The Twelfth of Never” and “It’s Not For Me to Say,” and I’d talk to my voice teacher and she’d say, “You sound terrible! I hate that.” But I’d make a million dollars with that!

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At a glance

Singer Johnny Mathis will perform as part of the “Voice of Romance Tour” at 8 p.m. Thursday in the Palace Theatre, 34 W. Broad St. Tickets cost $46 to $126. For more information, visit www.capa.com.

This article originally appeared on The Columbus Dispatch: Johnny Mathis: Legendary singer ready to entertain Columbus fans