Artist: Johnny Tillotson
Genre(s):
Rock
Retro
Discography:
Johnny Tillotson Collection
Year:
Tracks: 26
Greatest hits
Year:
Tracks: 30
A Portrait Of
Year:
Tracks: 22
Pop/rock singer and songwriter Johnny Tillotson enjoyed his sterling success in the early '60s when he scored a series of Top Ten hits including "Poetry in Motion" and the self-penned "It Keeps Right on a-Hurtin'." In total, he situated 30 singles and LPs in the Billboard charts between 1958 and 1984, well-nigh of them in the pop charts, though he as well reached the nation, R&B, and easy hearing charts. His string of hits allowed him to give a acting career both in the U.S. and around the world that unbroken him steadily working well into the 21st century.
Tillotson was innate April 20, 1939, in Jacksonville, FL, the boy of Jack Tillotson, a rural area music saucer jockey, and Doris Tillotson. When Tillotson was ennead, he affected 40 miles to the smaller Florida town of Palatka. He got his number one exposure as a isaac Merrit Singer on his father's radio station patch he was still a child. His primary interest group was country music, although he was elysian when he byword Elvis Presley perform in Jacksonville on May 13, 1955, only later on he had turned 14. Meanwhile, his wireless work light-emitting diode to a stint on a local TV point and even his possess syllabus. But he well-kept his studies, and he was attending the University of Florida as a news media and composing major in 1957 when he entered a national talent competition sponsored by Pet Milk. He was chosen as one of six-spot finalists, resulting in a trip to Nashville, TN, for the final judging. He did non win the contest, but piece in Nashville he came to the attending of a vocal publisher world Health Organization was impressed by songs he had written and got a tape of them to Archie Bleyer, proprietor of the independent Cadence Records label, place to the Everly Brothers and Andy Williams. Bleyer signed Tillotson to a three-year contract and, in September 1958, issued his number one single, compounding deuce of the singer's have compositions, the lay "Languorous Eyes" and the up-tempo "Well I'm Your Man," both of which dullard similarities to the well-grounded of Buddy Holly. "Well I'm Your Man" charted number one, peaking at number 87 in the Hot century in October, only "Woolgathering Eyes" followed, topping out at number 63 in January 1959. (The at the same time released "I'm Never Gonna Kiss You," a duo with Genevieve, a vocalist on the Jack Parr TV point, did non chart.)
The relative failure of "Woolgathering Eyes" sent Tillotson back up to college, where he received his B.A. in 1959; that August 1959 Cadence released his next single, "True True Happiness," a vocal in the currently popular adolescent pop elan, finish with recitations of amorous devotion; it petered out at phone number 54 in September. "Wherefore Do I Love You So," which followed in December, suggested that Tillotson had been hearing closely to Ricky Nelson's 1958 strike "Misfortunate Little Fool"; it reached number 42 in February 1960. Next, Bleyer well-tried having Tillotson cover a span of old R&B hits, combine the Penguins' "Ground Angel" and Johnny Ace's "Pledging My Love." Disc jockeys couldn't seem to determine which side of the single to play, and both peaked in the bottom half of the Hot century in May.
Tillotson stone-broke through to success with his sixth single, the live pop/rock tune "Poetry in Motion," released in September 1960. He and Bleyer had eventually set up an appropriate meeting place for his clear tenor voice vox, recording with a Nashville studio full of country music academic term stars like saxist Boots Randolph and piano player Floyd Cramer. "Verse in Motion" indisposed at number deuce in November 1960; in the U.K., it strike number one in January 1961. Instead of straight off turning to encompassing personal appearances, however, on Bleyer's advice Tillotson focussed in the main on his recording career, though he appeared on video and began to be featured in adolescent magazines. "Jimmy's Girl," his adjacent single, responded to this adolescent perfection range, but it stopped-up at number 25 in February 1961. Singing another of his own compositions, Tillotson produced "Without You," a dramatic, string-filled production in the manner of Roy Orbison; it reached number seven in September 1961. Cadence then re-released Tillotson's first single, "Moony Eyes," and it got to number 35 in January 1962.
That month, Tillotson recorded his most successful self-written song, "It Keeps Right on a-Hurtin'," divine by the terminal illness of his father-God. The song was given an overtly state arrangement, although Tillotson, as common, american ginseng it with his atonic enunciation, without a soupcon of a res publica twang. Nevertheless, it became his first area chart hit, peaking at number quadruplet, piece acquiring to number tercet in the pop chart (and fifty-fifty making number captain Hicks in the R&B chart). And it earned him his first Grammy nomination, for Best Country & Western Recording. It also went on to become a much-covered country-pop standard, recorded by Elvis Presley and by Billy Joe Royal, whose variation was a Top 20 nation hit in 1988, as well as, by Tillotson's count, all over century others, among them Bobby Darin, Sonny James, Hank Locklin, Dean Martin, Boots Randolph, Conway Twitty, Slim Whitman, and the Wilburn Brothers. By the time it was peaking in the charts in the give of 1962, Tillotson was service a six-month least sandpiper of active duty in the Army, having enlisted in the National Guard to satisfy his military responsibility. But he was given weekend furloughs to allow him to carry on to phonograph recording, and he used them to skip his first LP of new recordings (following the 1961 hits collection Johnny Reb Tillotson's Best), also called It Keeps Right on a-Hurtin'. Released in June 1962, the disk, a Top Ten shoot, establish Tillotson covering a series of state standards, and Cadence proceeded to dole many of them out as singles o'er the perch of the twelvemonth: a cover of Hank Locklin's "Send Me the Pillow You Dream On" made the pop and state Top 20 and the Top Ten of the easy listening chart, and a report of Hank Williams' "I Can't Help It (If I'm Still in Love with You)" (backed by another Williams criterion, "I'm So Lonesome I Could Cry") made the pop Top 40 and the easy listening Top Ten.
When Tillotson returned to recording in early 1963, his new self-written individual, "Out of My Mind," was another country-style ballad, although it did not progress to the res publica charts and unwell at number 24 on the Hot C in April. "You Can Never Stop Me Loving You," which followed July, was more of a pop song, and it returned Tillotson to the Top 20. (Its B-side, "Judy, Judy, Judy," which Tillotson co-wrote with Doc Pomus and Mort Shuman, was featured in the singer's film debut, the B-picture Precisely for Fun, which opened in June.)
Although he had renewed his shrink with Cadence for an extra ternion age in April 1961, Tillotson was released from his duty as the label wound down in 1963; it went out of business sector in 1964. (Eventually, Andy Williams purchased the Cadence masters, which he reissued through Barnaby Records and by and by made available through Celebrity Licensing, resulting in respective Tillotson compilations on Ace Records in the U.K. and Varèse Sarabande in the U.S. in the 1990s.) After unitary more Cadence single, a cover of Willie Nelson's "Comic How Time Slips Away" culled from the year-old It Keeps Right on a-Hurtin' record album that became a minor graph ingress, Tillotson formed his possess production company and hired his recordings to MGM Records, starting with his adaptation of the recent res publica telephone number one by Ernest Ashworth, "Talk Back Trembling Lips," released in October 1963. "Talk Back Trembling Lips" poorly at number septenary in January 1964, deuce weeks earlier the Beatles' "I Want to Hold Your Hand" entered the Hot 100, sign the begin of the British Invasion that would marginalise a generation of American pop artists, including Tillotson.
Tillotson, wHO had filmed Just for Fun in the U.K. and seen Beatlemania up close earlier about Americans, tried to keep up. His next individual, "Disquieted Guy," had a semblance of the Merseybeat sound, which was enough to get it into the Top 40 in March 1964 as his Talk Back Trembling Lips record album was peaking in the Top 50. "I Rise, I Fall" too managed a Top 40 ranking in June; "Vex" did virtually as well in September; and "She Understands Me" poorly at number 31 in December, presaging the chart ledger entry of a She Understands Me LP in former 1965. The moony ballad "Angel," his succeeding single, was the report song from the Walt Disney photographic film Those Calloways, which opened that outpouring; it ailing at number 51. Returning to a country-pop sound, Tillotson next released "Then I'll Count Again," which hardly made the charts. He fared better with a cover of the 1959 Ray Price land run into "Heartaches by the Number," which gave him his last Top 40 hit in October 1965 and earned a Grammy nominating address for Best Contemporary (R&R) Vocal Performance, Male. "Our World," an effort at pop philosophizing reflecting the agitation of the '60s, gave his final pop chart entering, peaking at issue 70 in December. (The single's B-side, "[Wait "Til You See] My Gidget," was the idea song to the raw TV series Gidget starring Sally Field, and Tillotson was heard singing it during the show's credits each calendar week.)
Tillotson took another shot at picture show work in the 1966 comedy The Fat Spy, opposite Phyllis Diller and Jayne Mansfield. His singles of 1966 and the showtime part of 1967 missed the pop charts, but by the fall of 1967 MGM had some success promoting him to the body politic market place, which responded modestly to "You're the Reason" and "I Can Spot a Cheater." But by mid-1968, the singer's years as a successful recording creative person were past tense. He stayed with MGM through 1968, then signed to Jimmy Bowen's Amos Records label, which had him cover Little Anthony & the Imperials' "Weeping on My Pillow" in 1969. The same yr, he scored a body politic off as a songster, when Ernest Tubb and Loretta Lynn took their duet on "Who's Gonna Take the Garbage Out" into the land Top 20. Tillotson had stints at Buddah Records (1971-1972), Columbia (1973-1975), and United Artists (1976-1977), the last producing a body politic graph ingress with "Toy Hearts." Another land graph entry came in 1984 with "Lay Back (In the Arms of Someone)" on Reward Records. In 1990, Tillotson released a single, "Bim Bam Boom," on Atlantic.
In the meantime, he was vocalizing his hits all all over the existence, year after yr. (His international profile was embossed by his practice of qualification foreign-language recordings of many of his songs.) By the tardy '60s, he had turned to cabaret solve, appearing in such prestigious rooms as the Copacabana in New York. He was not indisposed to rodeos and state fairs, either, nevertheless, and finally he worked his way up to the showrooms at in major hotels in Las Vegas, Lake Tahoe, and Reno, along with regular tours of Europe and the Far East. In 1996, he estimated that he was acting 230 years a year. He continued to circuit into the 21st one C, launching a web site, wWW.johnnytillotson.com, on which he kept fans current on forthcoming appearances and sold new CDs such as Love Songs and Standards, the archival appeal The Early Years, and The Golden Hits.
Dead To Fall
