B-side "Don't Cry Joni" Format 7" Genre Country | Released May 1975 Recorded 1974 Length 3:22 | |
"Touch the Hand" is a song co-written and recorded by American country music singer Conway Twitty. It was released in August 1975 as the first single from the album High Priest of Country Music. A ballad that became one of his 41 Billboard magazine No. 1 songs (all but one of them on the Hot Country Singles charts), the song represented one half of a double-sided hit for Twitty in 1975. The other side was "Don't Cry Joni." The song was written by Twitty and Ron Peterson.
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Story of "Don't Cry Joni"
"Don't Cry Joni" is Twitty's duet with his then 16-year-old daughter, Joni Lee Jenkins. According to country music writer Tom Roland, Joni Lee had wanted — after years of resistance — to become an entertainer, and her father decided that allowing her to duet with him on the song (which he had written years earlier) might provide some encouragement.
"Don't Cry Joni" represented the only major hit by any of Twitty's children; two other children — Kathy (aka "Jessica James") and Mike (aka "Charlie Tango") — failed to achieve notable success. In addition, the song was one of just two non-Loretta Lynn duets in which Twitty had major success (the other being a guest shot on Ronnie McDowell's 1988 cover of "It's Only Make Believe.")
This "B-side" single began achieving its popularity at the end of the summer of 1975, and eventually peaked at No. 4 that October. Its peak in popularity was unusual; Roland noted that the popularity of most other two-sided hits usually happened concurrently.
Plot
The song's plot is about a 15-year-old girl (Joni, sung by Joni Lee) who develops a crush on a 22-year-old neighbor of her family (Jimmy, of which part was sung by the elder Twitty). Despite Joni begging in a love letter to Jimmy to "please say you'll wait for me" so that they may someday get married, and pleading fidelity in the meantime ("Saving all my kisses just for you, signed with love forever true"), Jimmy goes over to Joni's house to explain their age differences and that he needs to find a suitable wife now. Joni is brought to tears with this realization.
Later in the song, Jimmy moves away and tries to find the woman of his dreams, but Joni's words ("Jimmy please say you'll wait for me, I'll grow up someday you'll see") are burned into his mind. Five years pass, and Jimmy realizes that Joni — although seven years his junior — may be the girl he was looking for all along. Jimmy decides to go back to his hometown, look up Joni and try to start a relationship ... only to realize his own heartbreak: Joni has married Jimmy's best friend, John.