At 89, legendary singer Johnny Matthysse has opened up more personally than ever before in a quiet, reflective confession about music and the voices that shaped him over his nearly nine decade career. The soft-spoken crooner, known for decades of tender ballads andvelvet phrasing, says he is not interested in discussing charts or awards. Instead, he is speaking now about the people he calls his compass, a handful of artists and his own father who he credits with forming the very core of his voice andidentity. “This isn’t name dropping,” he said with a faint smile.
“This is my compass. These singers are the reason I found my way. ”
Matthysse explains that the decision to speak now comes with age, clarity, and an urgent sense of gratitude. He reflected that no singer truly owns their voice alone; each one carries the echoes of those who came before.
The first voice he ever loved, he says, was that of his father, Clem Matthysse, a hard-working man in San Francisco who never sought fame but who filled their home with songs every evening. Johnny recalls listening to his father sing old standards, folk tunes, and hymns in their modest living room, learningthat music was not about polish but about meaning. That grounding, he says, gave him purpose, a reason to sing when applause fades. the strongest technical influence he names is Lena Horne, who he reveres as the foundation of his elegant style.
Watching her on television as a boy, he was transfixed by her poise, her quiet command of the stage, and her belief that subtlety could be stronger than volume. As a young African-American man entering music in the 1950s, he also saw Horne as a symbol of resistance through elegance, proving you could demand respect without raising your voice. He studied her phrasing line by line, he says, and she remains his north star every time he sings a ballad. Nat King Cole was the next giant on his list, the artist he calls his mirror.
Hearing Cole’s voice on the radio felt likea revelation; hiswarmth, his intimacy, his ability to make millions feel he was singing directly to them. For a young Matthysse unsure whether his gentle approach could compete with the era’s powerful belters, Cole was living proof that strength doesn’t have to be loud. He would spend hours studying Cole’s records, and he has openly acknowledged that every note he sings carries a shadow of Nat. Cole also carved a path through prejudice with grace, an example of dignity and artistry over bitterness that meant everything to him.
The two men met briefly at a Hollywood function, where Cole simply shook his hand and told him, “Keep singing. You’ve got the right idea. ” Matthysse never forgot it. efore Horne or Cole, however, there was Bing Crosby, whose easy, conversational singing style first taught young Johnny that music didn’t have to be complicated to be profound.
Hearing his father hum along to Bing’s records, Johnny absorbed the lesson that you don’t have to shout to be heard, and that truth always lands louder than effort. He admires Crosby’s ability to bridge generations, his sound simultaneous intimate and universal. He says Crosby taught him ease, the art of not trying too hard, a lesson he carried into his own career as he leaned into understatement while other artists reached for drama
from Crosby’s casual grace, Matthysse’s heart turns to Sarah Vaughan, the voice that defied gravity. He first heard her as a boy, and he was stunned by her daring, her three-octave range, and her fearlessness in taking risks.
Vaughan slid into unexpected notes and stretched phrases until they nearly broke, then rescued them at the last possible moment. Where Horne taught him poise and Cole showed him tenderness, Vaughan pushed him toward possibility, showing him that wrong could be right, that a crack could be gold, and that daring could be the soul of artistry. Her influence lingers in the subtle ornamentations of his ballads, in the gentle slides and unexpected pauses. He credits her with giving him courage to experiment quietly, elegantly, but bravely
he most sacred influence he names is Mahalia Jackson, the voice that carried not just notes but prayer.
Johnny says when he first heard her on the radio as a child, the sound struck him with a force he couldn’t explain, beautiful the way a thunderstorm is beautiful, beautiful overwhelming, terrifying, magnificent. With Jackson, it was never about style or polish. It was about truth, gospel truth, the raw ache of a people and the soaring hope of deliverance. Even without a church, he says, she made every space sacred ground.
She taught him that music could heal, that song could be bigger than singer. He never met her, but he says he carried her spirit into his own ballads of longing and devotion, always trying to reach not just the ear, but the soul
beyond those five celebrated names, Matthysse revealed that the deepest influence of all remains his father, Clem Matthysse. He was not famous, Johnny acknowledges, but he was everything. Clem didn’t teach him how to sing, but why to sing, that music could be joy, family, and survival when times were hard.
No matter how refined his voice became in studios and concert halls, he says he still hears his father’s voice in his own, and that thread from living room to world stages remains unbroken
Matthysse also hinted at more hidden influences. There were neighborhood singers, church soloists, nightclub performers who never made the headlines but carved deep grooves in his artistry. There were mentors, choir directors, pianists, and fellow singers who whispered advice in dressing rooms, the quiet heroes invisible to history but unforgettable to him. And then there were painful omissions, names tied to heartache so heavy they remain unspoken.
Some names, he said softly, carry too much weight to say aloud, but their presence remains in the way he leans into silence and stretches a phrase. They live in the spaces between the notes, invisible but vital
yet Matthysse is not just remembering. He is leaving a map, a tribute that he hopes will guide the next generation of singers. He implores young artists to trace the lineage back, to listen to the elegance of Horne, the velvet warmth of Cole, the easy grace of Crosby, the fearless flights of Vaughn, the spiritual fire of Jackson, and the grounding simplicity of a father singing in his living room.
He cements a truth he has carried for decades: legacy is not built on ego but on inheritance, and artistry is a thread in a longer tapestry. When his own voice finally fades, he believes those names, spoken and unspoken, will keep singing through him. “They travel with me,” he said softly. “And when I’m gone, I hope they’ll travel with you, too.
I’ve never sung alone. ”
