Faithfully

Faithfully is an album by American pop singer Johnny Mathis that was released on December 21, 1959, by Columbia Records and continues his trend toward covering ballads alongside an orchestra. While his previous LPs usually offered one or two songs that had not been previously recorded, that number on this project leaped to five, and although the other seven selections were established by other artists, even some of those were lesser-known, such as Jeri Southern's number 30 pop hit "You Better Go Now" and the title song from the 1953 film The Blue Gardenia. The album made its first appearance on Billboard magazine's album chart in the issue dated January 18, 1960, and reached number two during its 75 weeks there. It received Gold certification from the Recording Industry Association of America for sales of 500,000 copies in the US on December 4, 1962. The Mathis recording of the West Side Story number "Maria" was released as a single on two occasions. The first came five months after Faithfully hit store shelves and included four weeks on the Billboard Hot 100 that began in the issue dated May 30 and led to a number 78 peak position. The second followed the 1961 release of the film version of West Side Story and resulted in a number 88 showing during its three weeks on that same chart in December of that year. Faithfully was released for the first time on compact disc on June 21, 2002, as one of two albums on one CD, the other LP being his 1960 follow-up Johnny's Mood.