Pop music singer and one of the best-selling recording artists of the 20th century, Johnny Matisse said this week that he will perform four more live concerts before retiring from touring in nearly 70 years.
Known for his “Velvet Voice” in romantic ballads like “Not That I Say” and “Wonderful! Wonderful!” Mr. Matisse has been singing standards and soft rock since his teenage years, but after his debut album was released in 1956, he began touring professionally.
Matisse, 89, will pick up the show's microphones in April and May, but his concerts scheduled for the summer and fall have been cancelled.
“It's sincere to announce his retirement from tours and live concerts as Mattis' age and memory issues have accelerated,” said a statement posted on his website.
Matisse's final concert is scheduled for May 18th at the Bergen Performing Arts Center in Englewood, New Jersey. April 26th, Shipshewana, Indiana. May 10th in Santa Rosa, California.
His website will have some tickets still available at his final concert and refunds will be issued for those cancelled.
Matisse grew up in San Francisco and sang songs at clubs over the weekend in 1955. Its owner ultimately persuaded George Avakian, a record-breaking producer and talent scout with Columbia Records, to meet him.
After listening to Matisse's song, Avakian sent a telegram to Colombia. Columbia said, “I found an incredible 19-year-old boy who can go all the way. Send me a blank contract.”
Matisse is widely recognized as a pioneer in the romantic ballad style that appeared in the 1950s as a pop music alternative to high-energy rock and roll. By the end of the 1970s, Mattis continued to create more top-selling albums than any other modern pop performer except Frank Sinatra.
Four decades ago this month, critic Stephen Holden wrote in the New York Times that “Johnny Mattis is the most convincing index of the old writing tradition in recent years by the Bee Gees, George Benson, Al Jerlow and Julio Iglesias.”
In a review of the concert at Radio City Music Hall in New York, Holden said that Matisse's “etheric, horny tenor, though cognitively dark, is conveyed by its built-in sobs and breathtaking hem, conveys the same aura of longing fortunes that he went to in 1957.”
In 2003, Matisse was awarded the Grammy Award for Lifetime Achievement.
At his peak he had booked around 200 concert days a year.
“The road is my home,” he once said. “I'll take my best friend with me. We work together and play together. There's no other life.”
But midway through his career, Matisse admitted that he was uncomfortable on stage. “I hate that,” he said. “But that's something I have to do for the rest of my life, I don't know how to do anything else.
“There are moments when emotions come out and I'm absolutely hooked. I know this is right. This is great.”
