Sounds of Christmas
| Sounds of Christmas | ||||||||||
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| Studio album by Johnny Mathis | ||||||||||
| Released | October 4, 1963 | |||||||||
| Recorded | July 12, 1963 July 16, 1963 July 17, 1963 July 25, 1963 |
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| Genre | Christmas | |||||||||
| Length | 38:19 | |||||||||
| Label | Mercury Records | |||||||||
| Producer | Don Costa | |||||||||
| Johnny Mathis chronology | ||||||||||
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| Review scores | |
| Source | Rating |
| Allmusic |
  Review
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| Billboard | positive |
Sounds of Christmas is the second holiday-themed album by vocalist Johnny Mathis and the first of his 11 studio projects for Mercury Records. While his first yuletide effort, 1958's Merry Christmas, relied heavily on popular holiday carols and standards, this 1963 release included two new songs (the title track and "Have Reindeer, Will Travel") as well as covers of some lesser-known recordings by Andy Williams ("Christmas Is a Feeling in Your Heart") and Bing Crosby ("A Marshmallow World" and "The Secret of Christmas").
This album also differs from the 1958 LP in terms of how Billboard magazine gauged its success. Merry Christmas reached number three on the pop album chart that eventually became known as the Billboard 200. In 1963, however, the magazine began publishing special weekly Christmas Albums sales charts, where Sounds of Christmas spent two weeks at number two during that holiday season. It appeared on the magazine’s seasonal LP chart each year from 1964 to 1968 as well.
Two songs from the album, "The Little Drummer Boy" and "Have Reindeer, Will Travel", were released that year as a single, and the former spent its one week on the Billboard's Christmas Singles chart at number 21 in December 1963 and had another one-week showing there at number 11 in December 1964.
In 1971, Columbia Records reissued the album with different cover art as Christmas with Johnny Mathis on its budget Harmony Records imprint, but the two songs from the 1963 single were not included. This incarnation of the album was later reissued on compact disc. The complete album was issued on CD with its original title and track list by Legacy Recordings in November 2014 as part of the box set The Complete Global Albums Collection. The 2015 Mathis compilation The Complete Christmas Collection 1958–2010, a 3-CD set on the Real Gone Music label, also includes the entirety of the Sounds of Christmas album in its track list.
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