John Royce Mathis was born on 30 September 1935, in Gilmer, Texas USA, and is a singer known for singing a variety of ballads, jazz and standards. His popularity and fame has earned him high sales, such that he was named the third biggest selling artist of the 20th century. The numerous opportunities he took throughout his career have solidified his net worth.
How rich is Johnny Mathis? Sources inform us of a net worth that is at $400 million, mostly accumulated through his successful music career. He’s released platinum selling records, and also worked with some of the other biggest names in the industry. He owns a mansion in Hollywood Hills and a few production companies.
Johnny Mathis Net Worth $400 Million
Johnny started learning music at an early age – when his father discovered he had a talent for performing, he bought Johnny his first piano, which he learned on and started performing at home, at school and in church. When he was 13, he found voice teacher Connie Cox, who helped him work on his voice while he did jobs around her house. While at George Washington High School, he was also well-known for his track skills and playing basketball, because of which he was offered an athletic scholarship at San Francisco State University, aspiring to become a teacher one day.
Things changed when he was singing with friends at the Black Hawk Club. It was then that he was noticed by Helen Noga, who offered to manage Mathis, giving him numerous opportunities to perform at clubs. He eventually caught the attention of George Avakian, who convinced Johnny to sign with Colombia Records. Around the same time, Mathis was also offered to train for the US Olympic team as a high jumper, but he decided to go for a music career based on his father’s advice, as sport was largely amateur at that time. His first album was only a moderate success, but after releasing his second album, he soon found that he was being contacted by various companies to perform and record songs for movies. His appearance in the movie “Lizzie” and on television in “The Ed Sullivan Show” boosted his popularity and net worth to great heights.
In 1958, “Johnny’s Greatest Hits” was released and it spent nine and a half years in the Billboard Top 100 Charts, to 1967. Mathis decided to leave Noga’s management and establish Jon Mat Records, which subsequently handled his recordings, and Rojon Productions which handled all his appearances. He continued to make music, but felt a bit of a decline during the popularity of The Beatles and a rather different type of new music. However, he was back in the charts by the late-1970s, releasing Christmas songs and recording duets with other artists such as Deniece Williams, Dionne Warwick, Natalie Cole, Gladys Knight, and many others, all of which contributed to her rising net worth.
By the year 2000, Mathis had started limiting the number of concerts and performances he did in the year, but he still made numerous appearances on television, plus his music was featured in shows like “Mad Men”, and the “X-Files”.
Along with Barbra Streisand, Johnny is the artist that has the longest tenure with Colombia Records; his net worth has risen accordingly.
For his personal life, Johnny has been known to continue his enthusiasm for sports outside of music. He hosted the Johnny Mathis Golf Tournaments and loves to play golf during his free time. He’s had his bouts with alcohol and prescription drug addiction, and gone through rehab for both. He mentioned his stand on being comfortable with a life of homosexuality in 1982, but the topic only surfaced again in 2006, when Mathis stated that he had received death threats that had prompted him not to talk about it any further. He lived in SanFrancisco for many years, so he added that his sexual situation was not that unusual in that part of the world.
