Those Were the Days (Johnny Mathis album)

Those Were the Days
Studio album by Johnny Mathis
Released	1968
Genre	Vocal Pop/Rock[1]
Length	32:34
Label	Columbia
Producer	Robert Mersey[2]
Johnny Mathis chronology
Love Is Blue (1968) Those Were the Days (1968) People (1969)

Those Were the Days is an album by American pop singer Johnny Mathis that was released in the fall of 1968 by Columbia Records. It followed the formula of including covers of recent hit songs, the oldest, in this case, being "The End of the World", which hadn't been on the charts since 1963. Two of the 10 tracks, however, had not been released as singles by other artists: "Every Time I Dream of You", which had appeared as an instrumental on Bert Kaempfert's 1967 album Love That Bert Kaempfert,^[3] and "You Make Me Think About You", which was first heard in the 1968 film With Six You Get Eggroll.

The Mathis recording of "You Make Me Think About You" debuted on Billboard magazine's list of the 40 most popular Easy Listening songs in the US in the issue dated October 12, 1968, and reached number 35 during its four weeks there.^[4] The first appearance of the album on the magazine's Top LP's came two months later in the December 14 issue that began a 21-week run, during which time it peaked at number 60.^[5] In the meantime it also enjoyed four weeks on the Best Selling Rhythm & Blues LP's chart, where it got as high as number 48.^[A] In March of 1969 the cover of "The 59th Street Bridge Song (Feelin' Groovy)" spent its two weeks on the Easy Listening chart at number 39.^[4]

Those Were the Days was released for the first time on compact disc on June 9, 2009, as one of two albums on one CD, the second of the two being the follow-up by Mathis, Love Theme from "Romeo And Juliet" (A Time for Us).^[6]

Track listing

Side one

1. "Those Were the Days" (Gene Raskin) – 3:59
2. "Little Green Apples" (Bobby Russell) – 3:38
3. "The End of the World" (Arthur Kent, Sylvia Dee) – 3:10
4. "This Guy's In Love With You" (Hal David, Burt Bacharach) – 4:37
5. "The 59th Street Bridge Song (Feelin' Groovy)" (Paul Simon) – 2:10

Side two

1. "Light My Fire" (Jim Morrison, John Densmore, Ray Manzarek, Robby Krieger) – 3:48
2. "Every Time I Dream of You" (Richard Ahlert, Bert Kaempfert, Herbert Rehbein) – 3:53
3. "The World I Used to Know" (Rod McKuen) – 2:30
4. "You Make Me Think About You" from With Six You Get Eggroll (Bob Hilliard, Robert Mersey) – 1:59
5. "Turn Around Look at Me" (Jerry Capehart) – 2:50

Personnel

• Johnny Mathis – vocals
• Robert Mersey – arranger and conductor (except as noted), producer^[2]
• D'Arneill Pershing – arranger and conductor ("This Guy's In Love With You", "The 59th Street Bridge Song (Feelin' Groovy)")^[2]
• Rafael O. Valentin – engineer^[2]
• Frank Bez – photography^[2]

Notes

^A Joel Whitburn's Top R&B Albums, 1965-1998 lists this album as having peaked on the Best Selling Rhythm & Blues LP's chart at number two for two weeks out of the four that it spent there.^[7] The four corresponding weekly issues of Billboard, which is their source for this information, however, indicate that it only made it to number 48.^[8]

References

Bibliography