In 1976, the
Johnny Mathis/Jack Gold singer/producer team reunited after 1975's stint with producer John Florez for the When Will I See You Again album. It's right back to that familiar and successful groove on
I Only Have Eyes for You, with
Gene Page arranging and conducting Gold's production work. A movie theme and adult contemporary reworkings continue the song selection from the year before. Where "Mandy" led off the When Will I See You Again LP, it's "I Write the Songs" here, and though he doesn't write them, it's a nice swim through
Bruce Johnston's greatest hit. Likewise, "Laughter in the Rain" graced the previous disc, while a wondrous reading of
Neil Sedaka's "The Hungry Years" emerges this time around. The real nugget here, though, is a song written by
Harriet Schock specifically for
Mathis, a tune not on any of her own albums. "Ooh What We Do" is a special moment where
Mathis is breathing life into a title untouched by his contemporaries.
Schock gave AMG some insight on how the song came to be: "It was not on any of my albums. I taught it to
Johnny in the studio and he really liked it. He was reading the lyric to a friend who was in there with him. He had been an idol of mine when I was a child. 'I drink up your liquid movements like I'm dying of thirst...I could watch you stand forever, but come on over here first...how could we be so together when we're so unrehearsed....' Anyway, Jack Gold of Columbia Records produced it. He had signed me to Columbia before I went to 20th Century Fox, a little-known fact. When the payola scandal hit, a lot of artists got dropped. I was among them. I hadn't even recorded for them yet. This was about 1972...so Jack was very familiar with my work even before 'Ain't No Way to Treat a Lady.' He was a very witty, eloquent man -- Jack Gold. When people would show him songs or acts and he didn't like them, they would occasionally say, 'I'm going to have to go over your head to Clive with this,' to which he would reply, 'Over my head and around my back...the two most traveled paths in America.' I loved him. He died a few years ago. That's my little story about 'Ooh What We Do.' At the end when I have 'hari krishna, amen...,' at one point I had 'oy vey,' but they took that out."
What they didn't take out is a line "both of us slowly stalking each other for so long," which seemed so innocent in 1976. But what the song does uncover is the idea that
Mathis could have gotten away with putting a few more top-flight songs on his albums in the '70s. "Ooh What We Do" is an exciting departure from the predictability of
Sondheim's "Send in the Clowns," though
Mathis just does everything so well, and there is safety in numbers. Billy Sherrill and
Charlie Rich's "Every Time You Touch Me (I Get High)" has a dazzling arrangement, and moments like this make the covers worthwhile. Still, the artist got more coverage when he hit number one again with "Too Much, Too Little, Too Late" two years after this, 21 years after "Chances Are" first accomplished that feat. "Ooh What We Do" might've fared better had it been the title track rather than the up-tempo, almost disco version of
the Flamingos' signature tune. The Las Vegas-style arrangement of the 1959 hit "I Only Have Eyes for You" survives because of
Mathis' voice and style, but it is the new song he discovered here that brings magic to this collection. ~ Joe Viglione