Sometime in the mid-2000s, my wife and I went to Wendover, Nevada to see Johnny Mathis sing in person. He was getting up there in age. He was born in 1935, so he was pushing Seventy or in his Seventies, depending on exactly when we saw him. You could tell that he was feeling his age, but the voice, oh, that voice. It was the same as it had ever been. He did all his hits and he has many. But “Chances Are” was probably his biggest hit.

Johnny Mathis is known as one of the greatest crooners of our time. They called him “the velvet voice.” In his career, he sold more than 350 million albums. He has recorded in several different genres, such as pop, jazz, soul, Spanish and others.

The song was written by the writing team of Robert Allen and Al Stillman. Other than “Chances Are” they wrote such classics as “(There’s No Place Like) Home For the Holidays,” a song you still hear every year at Christmas time and “Everybody Loves a Lover” a well-known song sung by Doris Day.

“Chances Are” can be heard playing during the alien visit in the movie Close Encounters of the Third Kind.

It entered the pop chart on October 24, 1957 and spent one week as number one.

Next: “You Send Me” – Sam Cooke