Chances Are It's the Twelfth of Never #MusicMovesMe

 

Welcome to another edition of Music Moves Me!

Who are the #MusicMovesMe bloggers? We are bloggers who blog about music each Monday and if you have music to share with us, you are most welcome to join! (Music Posts Only , please!)   First, there is XmasDolly,   Her co-hosts are: Stacy of Stacy Uncorked, Cathy from Curious as a Cathy, and me. Xmas Dolly has had some issues with her blog, but I hope she is able to join us today.

Each month we have a guest co-hosts who picks themes for the month, and this month we are featuring our very own founder and head host, Xmas Dolly.  Applause!

The theme for today is "Build a Johnny Mathis playlist".  I am going to do that, but I have a secondary theme today, for a reason I will make clear a little later.

Johnny Mathis was (and is, as he is still with us at age 85) a favorite singer of many in the 1950's. I remember some of his song from my childhood.  Mathis was still touring at the time the pandemic hit last February.  Incidentally, he prefers being called "John" to being called "Johnny".

So let's take a short trip back to the 1950's.

What a smooth voice.  Johnny Mathis never (to the best of my knowledge) wrote any of his hit songs, but he sure knew how to pick them.

One of Johnny Mathis' biggest hits is my personal favorite of his. "Chances Are", from 1957, and his first #1 hit.

"Wonderful, Wonderful", also from 1957,  "only" went to #14 on the Billboard 100.

"The Twelfth of Never" from 1956 and that harp at the beginning....This was the B side of "Chances Are".  This song has been covered by several artists since Johnny Mathis, including Elvis, Tammy Wynette, and Olivia Newton-John.

Now, I want to skip ahead a couple of  decades and play something from a 1973 performance on the TV show "Soul Train".  Here is Mathis covering the Stylistic's 1972 hit "I'm Stone In Love with You".

I want to change direction for my final two songs.

On March 1, 2020, New York State, where I was born and have spent much of my life, recorded its first case of COVID-19.  We had no idea what would be happening here, and in much of the world, just mere weeks later.  I want to take a moment to remember when life was...well, the way it was.

In 2017, Johnny Mathis recorded an album of songs from the Great American Book.  Here is one of them:  "Remember When".  It's not quite on topic, but it expresses my mood today.

Here's the final song in today's Johnny Mathis playlist, from the Broadway musical "Cats", Johnny Mathis covers "Memory".

To the 46,970 plus New Yorkers who have died from COVID-19 since March 1, 2020, including over 29,000 in the city of my birth, you are not forgotten.

And that's a wrap.