#397: Everything That Touches You by the Association

City: Vancouver, BC
Radio Station: CKLG
Peak Month: February 1968
Peak Position ~ #1
Peak Position on Billboard Hot 100 ~ #10
YouTube: “Everything That Touches You”
Lyrics: “Everything That Touches You”

Terry Kirkman was born in Salina, Kansas, in 1939. He learned to play a number of brass instruments in his childhood and majored in music in Chaffey College in southern California. He met Frank Zappa in college in 1959, and the pair performed in coffeehouses through to 1961. As a salesman visiting Hawaii in 1962, Kirkman met Jules Alexander, who was in the United States Navy. They planned to meet again when Alexander would be discharged from his military duties. Kirkman moved to Los Angeles with Alexander in 1963. The pair founded a folk group they named the Inner Tubes. At one time The Inner Tubes included both Cass Elliot and David Crosby. The Inner Tubes slowly grew from a small group into a 13-piece band called the Men. In February 1965, when The Men disbanded, Kirkman and five other members formed their own band. To find a new name, they perused a dictionary and chose “the Association” after it was suggested by Kirkman’s fiancée.

The Association’s lineup consisted of Kirkman, Alexander, guitar player and singer Russ Giguere, bass guitarist Brian Cole, drummer Ted Bluechel Jr., and keyboard and guitar player Jim Yester.

Jules Alexander was born in 1943 in Chattanooga, Tennessee. He learned to play guitar before he was drafted into the United States Navy in 1961.

Jim Yester was born in 1939 in Birmingham, Alabama. When he was three years old his family moved to Burbank, California. In elementary school he learned to play harmonica, and by his early teens had learned to play piano. In the late 50’s and early 60’s Jim and his brother Jerry formed the folk duo the Yester Brothers. Jim Yester enlisted in the United States Army in 1961. He was discharged in 1964. Yester was asked to join The Association two weeks after it formed when rhythm guitarist Bob Page left the band in its infancy.

Brian Cole was born in Tacoma, Washington, in 1942. He worked as a lumberjack, an actor and a comedian. By the early 60’s he was a father of two children with his spouse. Ted Bluechel Jr. was born in San Pedro, California, in 1942. In the late 1950s to early 1960s Bluechel Jr. was with The Cherry Hill Singers.

In 1965, The Association’s first single was “Babe I’m Gonna Leave You”, chosen due to the popularity of Joan Baez’s rendition of the folk standard. However, it was not a commercial success.

In 1966, the Association had a Top Ten hit titled “Along Comes Mary”. They also had a number-one hit titled “Cherish”. For that effort, the group received three Grammy Award nominations in 1967: Best Contemporary Group Performance (which they lost out to the Mamas and the Papas’ “Monday Monday”, Best Performance By A Vocal Group (won by the Anita Kerr Singers), and Best Contemporary Recording (which was won by the New Vaudeville Band’s “Winchester Cathedral”). A second album, Renaissance, failed to produce any Top 30 hits.

In March 1967, Jules Alexander left the Association to study meditation in India. He would return to the group he had helped found in early 1969. Replacing Alexander was Larry Ramos, who was born in Waimea, Kauai, Hawaii, in 1942. Of Filipino descent, his father operated pool halls and taught Larry to play the ukulele. At age 13, Ramos performed in the national tour of the musical The King and I as understudy (to Patrick Adiarte) in the role of the crown prince of Thailand opposite Yum Brynner. He performed the lead role with Leonard Graves and Patricia Morison in 1955 (while the film was being produced) at the Royal Alexander Theatre in Toronto. Concerned that her son’s education was inadequate, Ramos’ mother withdrew him from the tour after a year.

In 1962, Ramos joined The New Christy Minstrels. While he was with the folk group, they won a Grammy Award in 1963 for their album Presenting the New Christy Minstrels – in the category Best Performance by a Chorus. He was also on the recording of the folk group’s signature song, “Green Green”. But after three years of constant touring, Ramos quit The New Christy Minstrels in early 1966 to devote his attention to his family, including two twin daughters. Ramos released a solo single that year.

When Larry Ramos was invited to join The Association he was picked to provide lead vocals on the number-one hits “Windy” and “Never My Love”. Both peaked at number-one on the Cashbox Top 100 Singles chart, though only “Windy” climbed to the top of the Billboard Hot 100 chart, with “Never My Love” stalling at #2 (kept out of the top spot variously by “The Letter” by  The Box Tops, and “To Sir With Love” by Lulu. Both “Windy” and “Never My Love” were from the album Insight Out.

In 1968, The Association received three more Grammy Award nominations. These were for a) “Windy” in the Best Contemporary Group Performance category, which was won by the Fifth Dimension’s “Up, Up and Away”, b) “Never My Love” in the Best Performance By A Vocal Group category, which was won again by the Fifth Dimension’s “Up, Up and Away”, and c) Insight Out in the Best Contemporary Album category, which was won by The Beatles for Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band.

The Association released a third studio album titled Birthday. The lead single was “Everything That Touches You”.

Terry Kirkman wrote “Everything That Touches You”. Kirkman and Jim Yester handled the lead vocals on the song. The lyrics depict a young man enthralled with a new love. Yet, this young man is aware of feeling vulnerable as he lets himself be open to the risk of falling in love: “In my most secure moments I still can’t believe, I’m spending those moments with you.” Kirkman’s earlier hit for the group, “Cherish”, carried a sense of  similar threshold moment of letting someone know you love them: “Cherish is the word I use to describe, all the feeling that I have hiding here for you inside…. Perish is a word that more than applies, to the hope in my heart each time I realize, when I am not going to be the one to share your dreams…” In “Everything That Touches You” the young man is ebullient knowing that “the ground that I’m walking, the air that I breathe. Are shared at those moments with you.”

On the blog, ijustdisappear.com, the writer KarmaFrog commented on the Association’s music video for “Everything That Touches You”.

The video, and the moment in time it captures, are perfectly at one with what “Everything That Touches You offers – a vision of a giddy instant when everything is possible, you’ve glimpsed the promise of something deeper and vaster than anything you’ve ever experienced before, and you’re leaning into the future with heart-pounding expectation.

The band’s trademark block harmonies arrive on the chorus, which pulls us in by getting quieter. Furthering the mood of supressed excitement, the bass tick-tocks intensely while the harmonies, deliberately voiced lower than the verse melody, wash over us and a falsetto counterpoint (mimed on the clip by Larry Ramos) calls us from a distant mountain. It all gathers into one spine-tingling but restrained ball of sound as the title completes the chorus, the word “touches” dangling forever as the various members of the band coalesce to the block harmony from their disparate melodic perches. At this point the video pans to author Kirkman, sporting a wide, spontaneous grin of appreciation as his bandmates bring home the hook.

…. Oh my God, that fade out. The intro bass figure re-establishes itself, and then the group embarks on a dazzling counterpoint round of various “loves” darting throughout the audio spectrum, coalescing to the unified, forceful statement of “EVERYTHING IS” before scattering again like butterflies, as a palace guard of trumpeteers marches off into the distance. Repeat, fade. WOW.

The second verse lets us know that the singer in the song has been singing love songs about women, previously. He was just doing his gig as a singer, recording and singing these love songs. He hadn’t a firsthand experience of falling in love. But now he’s really living the aspiration of a love song he’s singing in real time:

In the songs I’ve been singing quite often a phrase
Comes close to the feeling of you
But I never suspected that one of those days
The wish of the song would come true.

The bridge expands on the effervescent sense of timing and the wonder of who the singer has fallen in love with:
You are of gracefulness, you are of happiness
You are what I would guess to be most like
What I’ve been singing of
(Love, love, love, love).

In early 1968 the Vietnam War raged on, and there were Civil Rights protests in America. However, the Association offered up a ‘Sunshine Pop” tune to keep listeners in an upbeat mood. Other songs of the ‘Sunshine Pop’ genre include “59th Street Bridge Song (Feelin’ Groovy)” by Harper’s Bizarre, “The Rain, the Park and Other Things” by the Cowsills, “Up, Up and Away” by the Fifth Dimension, “Sit Down I Think I Love You” by the Mojo Men, “Twelve Thirty” by The Mamas and the Papas, “Sunday Will Never Be the Same” by Spanky & Our Gang, “She’d Rather Be with Me” by the Turtles, “Sunshine Girl” by the Parade, “Yellow Balloon” by the Yellow Balloon, “I Could Be So Good To You” by Don & the Goodtimes, and “A Girl Like You” by the Young Rascals.

“Everything That Touches You” peaked at #1 in Vancouver (BC), Sarasota (FL), Providence (RI), New Britain (CT), and Santa Rosa (CA), #2 in Jacksonville (FL), Geneva (NY), Quincy (IL), and Madison (WI), #3 in Kitchener (ON), Davenport (IA), Billings (MT), Salt Lake City, Pittsburgh, Toledo (OH), Orlando, Lansing (MI), Battle Creek (MI), Tulsa (OK), and Lethbridge (AB), #4 in Toronto, Omaha (NE), Wilkes-Barre (PA), Canton (OH), Fort Wayne (IN), Portland (ME), Columbus (OH), Raleigh (NC), and Rochester (NY), #5 in Miami, Roanoke (VA), Cleveland, Beaumont (TX), Buffalo, Charleston (WV), New York City, Grand Rapids (MI), Louisville (KY), Lexington (KY), and San Francisco, #6 in Indianapolis (IN), Manchester (NH), Philadelphia, Cincinnati (OH), Boston, Milwaukee, Jacksonville (FL), Augusta (GA), Chicago and Key West (FL), #7 in San Diego, Knoxville (TN), Ann Arbor (MI), Hartford (CT), Easton (PA), Dayton (OH), Gary (IN), Vancouver (WA), and Birmingham (AL), #8 in Seattle, Babylon (NY), Dallas, Denver, and Troy (NY), #9 in San Bernardino (CA), Waterbury (CT), Reading (PA), Evanston (IL), and Minneapolis/St. Paul, and #10 in Tucson (AZ).

A followup single, “Time For Livin'” was The Association’s seventh and final Top 40 hit, stalling at #39. In 1969, new songs by The Association were featured in the art film Goodbye Columbus.

In 1970, Russ Giguere left the Association. The following year he released a solo album titled Hexagram 16. From the album came a single titled “Rosarita Beach Cafe”. In 1977, he was part of a trio called The Wolfman Speaks which included the iconic actor, Lon Chaney, known for playing the character Larry Talbot in the 1941 film The Wolf Man. Giguere was back with The Association from September 1979 until January 2014.

The Association released three more studio albums between 1969 and 1972. But none of these were met with notable commercial success.

In 1972, Brian Cole died of a heroin overdose. The previous few years he had become a heavy drug user. He died at age 29. Several more singles were released and given little attention by radio stations.

In 1975, Larry Ramos left The Association over differences of opinion regarding the direction of the band. But he rejoined The Association in 1979. Ramos was with the Association between 1979 and January 2014 (with a brief absence after his heart attack in 2011. He died in 2014 of cancer at the age of 72.

Jules Alexander returned to the Association from 1979 to 1989, and from 2012 to the present. Jim Yester was with the Association until leaving in 1973, but returning from 1974 to 1977, 1979 to 1983, and 2007 to the present. The Association had one last appearance on American Bandstand in 1981 when Jim Yester was still part of the group.

Terry Kirkman left the Association in 1972. But he returned from 1979 to 1983. After he left the music business, Kirkman worked as an addictions counselor. He died in 2023 of congestive heart failure at the age of 83.

Ted Bluechel Jr. was with The Association until 1984. He began working with the Corporal Bank at Chase Manhattan.  He married in 1981 and settled in Burlinghame, California. Bluechel Jr. changed his name to Richard Blue. After he retired, he moved with his family to London in 1998, returning to the USA in 2008. He passed away in 2009 when he was 62 years old.

Jim Yester was with the Association from 1965–1973, 1974–1977, 1979–1983, and 2007 to the present. He sang with the Modern Folk Quartet from 1985 to 1991. Subsequently, he was with the Lovin’ Spoonful from 1991 to 1994. In the mid-90s he formed YBS (Jim Yester, Bruce Belland of the Four Preps, and David Somerville of the Diamonds). The trio performed until 2015 when David Somerville died. Jim Yester still performs on occasion.

There have been many other members in the lineup of The Association over the decades. These include the son of Brian Cole, Jordan Cole (since 1999). As well, a brother of Larry Ramos, Del Ramos, has been with the band since 1999. For three non-consecutive years, Jim Yester’s brother Jerry was a member of the band. In addition, there have been another thirty musicians in the lineup.

In 2003, the Association were inducted into the Vocal Group Hall of Fame. The group sang “Windy” and “Along Comes Mary” at the induction.

October 28, 2024
Ray McGinnis

References:
KarmaFrog, “Perfect Records: Everything that Touches You,” ijustdisappear.com, December 28, 2018.
Christi Carras, “Singer-songwriter Terry Kirkman, founding member of the Association, dies at 83,” Los Angeles Times, 2023.
“Richard Blue Obituary,” New York Times, May 27, 2009.
Raymond Douglas Chong, “The Story Behind the First Asian American to Win a Grammy Award,” AsAmNews, February 6, 2023.
“Brian Cole 8/72,” rockandrollparadise.com, August 2, 2017.
Paul Cowsill, “We Cherish This Weeks Interview with Jules Alexander,” iHeart, July 27, 2021. (Interview starts about minute 29).
Spotlight Central, ““Cherish is the Word” Spotlight on The Association’s Jim Yester,” September 12, 2020.
Joel Goldenberg, “Sunshine pop offered some respite from ’60s strife,” The Suburban, February 27, 2016.
CKLG 730-AM, “Boss 30,” Vancouver, BC, February 24, 1968.