Johnny Mathis: I think the thing that motivated me most musically — and that’s about all I can think of, because my life has been all about music — the rest of the things I’ve sort of learned along the way. For instance, how to take care of my body physically, so that I’ll be able to sing when I’m required to. That I learned at an early age, because of my athletics in college and high school. So I learned to exercise regularly so that I could be strong physically to support the tones. I was fascinated from a very early age by opera singers. They were the ones that I listened to, and that my teacher Connie Cox played for me ad nauseam. She felt that if I could learn from them the technique of producing the tones properly — not just producing them, but producing them so that I wouldn’t do harm to my vocal cords — that was the thing that was important to her. And that was the thing that has stood me in good stead all these years.