Johnny's Greatest Hits
Johnny's Greatest Hits is a compilation album by vocalist Johnny Mathis that was released by Columbia Records on March 17, 1958, and has been described as the "original greatest-hits package". The LP collected all but one of the songs from the first six singles he recorded, including eight A- and B-sides that made the singles charts in "The Billboard" (now simply known as "Billboard" magazine) as well as three B-sides that did not chart and one new track ("I Look at You") that was co-written by Mathis but not released as  a single. The album made its debut on the Best Selling Pop LPs chart in the issue of "The Billboard" dated April 14, 1958, and eventually spent three weeks at number one. It had its last appearance there over 10 years later, in the July 20, 1968, issue, which marked its 490th non-consecutive week there, a record for the most weeks on the magazine's list of the most popular pop albums in the US that it held for 15 years until Pink Floyd's "The Dark Side of the Moon" reached 491 weeks there in the issue dated  October 29, 1983. "Johnny's Greatest Hits" received gold certification from the Recording Industry Association of America for sales of 500,000 copies in June 1959, and Platinum certification for reaching the one million mark was awarded on November 1, 1999. The album was initially only available in the monaural format but was reissued in 1962 with a banner added to the original cover that read, "Electronically Re-channeled for Stereo". In 1977, the album was once again reissued, this time with a new jacket design that included a current and much larger headshot of Mathis. This cover was also used  for its first release on compact disc in 1988 and as part of a 1995 three-disc set that included his Platinum 1959 album "Heavenly" and his 1984 concert album "Live". Reception. Robert Christgau insisted that "Wonderful! Wonderful!", "It's Not for Me to Say", "Chances Are", "The Twelfth of Never", and "Wild Is the Wind" "are the substance of Mathis's legend and legacy. Poised on the cusp of black and white, masculine and feminine, they projected an image of egoless tenderness, an irresistible breath of sensuality that infused the airwaves for the second half of 1957 and kept  1958's "Johnny's Greatest Hits" on the album chart for 490 weeks." AllMusic's Cub Koda simply proclaimed, "It seldom gets more romantic than this."