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Johnny Tillotson - The Christmas Touch

Johnny Tillotson
Here we are in the post Christmas dead space between turkey and champagne. It’s one of my favourite times of the year. We still have the tree up and Christmas music still plays while we lounge around the house.

The Christmas Touch is another one of those "who is this guy?" Christmas albums. I got it because the 12 year old goof in me giggled at the album title. I could imagine it being sung to the tune of "The Bad Touch" by The Bloodhound Gang. I'm not proud of myself for this, but it is what it is. I've accepted the things I can't really change about my sense of humour.

I'd not heard of Johnny Tillotson before, so I scanned through some of my '60s collections, and sure enough in the early '60s he'd struck gold with songs like "Poetry in Motion" and "It Keeps Right On A-Hurtin'," with the latter being covered by the likes of Bobby Darin, Elvis, and even Slim Whitman. The Christmas Touch is a collection of mid '60s pop with a lot of lush strings that at times bordered on country. It made sense that Johnny Tillotson enjoyed some crossover success.

The songs here cover many of the standard modern classics. From "Winter Wonderland" to "White Christmas" and some I'd not heard before such as "Christmas Country Style" and a couple of others. I thought I'd add a song that started with "C" just to show that all the songs did not start with a "W."

MGM Records
I have to admit that the little soliloquy in the middle of "White Christmas" where Johnny wonders where the Christmas spirit has gone in this modern world just shows that the more things change, the more things stay the same. Like so many Christmas albums, this one is short ... really short. All of the songs are under three minutes, with a couple not even hitting the two minute mark.

I got a kick out of the back cover where Stan Applebaum, who arranged and conducted the orchestra, wrote a little note to Johnny talking about how good old Johnny was an unspoiled and wholesome human being. Young Johnny wrote back saying he'd heard the songs on the album and how much he enjoyed it, blah blah blah. It is a Christmas album, it's supposed to be a little sugary.

back cover
Like so many albums that come out for the holidays, this one too had no indication as to when it came out. Didn't take a lot to look it up and get the year. It was 1966, and this LP seems to be an original pressing. It did have the shrink wrap, but it was fraying, so I decided to remove it. This is a really fun collection of songs, and the arrangements are interesting while staying true to the original songs. The music hearkens to an earlier time that owed more to the late '50s. Johnny's voice is a little too thin to fit into being a crooner, but as a pop singer his voice is smooth and his tone is really clear.

For me it was another good discovery and an addition to my Christmas collection.

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