Johnny Tillotson passed away on 1st April 2025 and, as usual, I paid tribute at my regular quiz nights and promptly played his biggest hit Poetry in Motion. A guy, who wasn’t taking part in the quiz, came up and queried my announcement about Johnny’s death saying, “He died years ago.” I said, no he didn’t he died yesterday at the age of 86. He seemed satisfied that I knew what I was talking about, shook my hand and as he walked away, muttered, “I have no idea what this song is about anyway.”, I called after him saying I’ll write about it on my website. I don’t think he heard me and doubt he will even read this, but I’ll write it anyway.
Tillotson was born in Jacksonville, Florida and grew up 60 miles away in Palatka. He got his break at the age of nine when he entered a talent contest called Young Folk Revue on a local radio station. He learned guitar and ukulele and enlisted in the University of Florida, but soon his musical ambition overtook the studies and he left to pursue a career in music. He later had a stint as a DJ on the radio station WWPF. He began singing and was discovered by Mae Boren Axton, the writer of Elvis Presley’s debut hit Heartbreak Hotel and the mother of Hoyt who wrote Three Dog Night’s Joy To the World and had a minor hit of his own in 1980 with Della & the Dealer. He appeared on the Toby Dowdy TV Show and later had his own TV show.
In 1958, Tillotson signed a record deal with Cadence records and was asked by the label’s owner, Archie Bleyer, to go to New York to record some tracks. He cut a number of songs and had the first of his 31 US hits later the same year with Dreamy Eyes. One of the songs he recorded was Poetry in Motion, but Tillotson wasn’t too happy with it and it was decided he should go to a recording studio in Nashville to re-record the track. The new recording was released and went to number two in the States and became the first number one of 1961 in the UK. Like Bobby Vee, Frankie Avalon, Fabian and Bobby Rydell, Johnny Tillotson was one of the good-looking, cool-dressed teenage idols who came along while Elvis was in the US Army.
In the sleeve notes of his Greatest Hits collection, Johnny recalled, “My mother had a dream of being a singer and dancer – she used to take me to see a lot of movie musicals. I told her I wanted to be a singing cowboy and she said, ‘Being a cowboy isn’t that easy, so why don’t you just concentrate on singing.'” and that’s exactly what he did.
Tillotson explained to Spencer Leigh how he got the song, “Archie Bleyer brought me a song called Poetry In Motion, a few other singers had turned it down, but I couldn’t get it out of my mind. It was such a perfect picture of the beauties of ladies on every level. I kinda felt we had a hit there. It was written by Mike Anthony & Paul Kaufman and a couple of years ago, just before he passed away, Mike wrote a number one country record for John Michael Montgomery, I Miss You A Little. He was the sweetest man and he never gave up. The whole Nashville A-team was playing on Poetry In Motion: Boots Randolph on sax, Floyd Cramer on piano, Hank Garland on guitar and Buddy Harmon on drums. The B-side, Princess Princess was one I wrote and it was how I felt about the girls in the audience.”
Archie Bleyer was not only the record owner and producer, he cared and nurtured his artists, very unlike today. Tillotson didn’t tour whilst Poetry was riding high, instead he continued perfecting his vocal style. Johnny explained what Archie did, “He had a theory that unless you had something that just flew out of the record shops, in other words, a song that couldn’t be stopped, you just had to go out and do every major record hop and meet every DJ to convince them to play your song and Archie said he didn’t want me getting into any bad vocal habits. Let’s just make records and it wasn’t until after Poetry in Motion that I began performing live. He taught me some important lessons I have never forgotten.”
In the UK he had further hits with Jimmy’s Girl which stalled at number 43, It Keeps Right On A Hurtin’ which fared better, reaching number 31 in 1962 in the UK but became his most successful song Stateside. He joined the U.S. Army in Fort Jackson, South Carolina for six months and on completion of his service he continued his career with a string of live appearances. Later in 1962, he recorded a cover of Hank Lockin’s 1949 hit Send Me The Pillow You Dream On and took it to number 21 and he closed 1962 with a cover of Hank Williams’ 1951 song I Can’t Help It If I’m Still In Love With You which Tillotson shortened to I Can’t Help It on the single but the EP version listed the full title. His last hit came in 1963 when the almost never-heard Out of my Mind stiffed at number 34.
He released a few more single, but all flopped in the UK and made little impact on the US single chart too. He decided to change his image and lose the teen-idol persona, after all, he was around 28 years of age and focused on being a crooner. He got a residency at the Copacabana Club in New York which was so successful that he became in demand in Miami and Las Vegas. The word spread and soon he was performing further afield in Germany and Sweden.
In 1968, he moved to California and tried his hand at acting, appearing as Dodo Bronk in The Fat Spy and 10 years later and even more minor part in The Call of the Wild where he portrayed a guitar player.
In 1979, the Lightning record label re-issued Poetry in Motion as a picture disc and listed it as a double A-side with its original B-side Princess Princess but it got no higher than number 67. Either way, it did better that the country singer Ferlin Husky’s parody cover, under the pseudonym Simon and Crum and retitle it Enormity in Motion which sunk without trace. In 2000 he came to the UK for a lengthy and very successful tour with Bobby Vee and Freddy Cannon. He said at the time, “I never walk through a show. I feel a deep sense of responsibility to each person in that audience. They come to be entertained and that’s what I attempt to do.”