Christmas Is... Johnny Farnham (later re-released twice as Memories of Christmas by Johnny Farnham, with different cover art, at the time of the album's release, he was now recording under John Farnham) is a studio album of
Christmas songs recorded by Australian pop singer
John Farnham (then billed as Johnny Farnham) and released on
EMI Records in December 1970.[1][2][3] The single, "Christmas Happy", was also released in December. It would be Farnham's only Christmas album until some 46 years later, when in 2016 he would release
Friends for Christmas, a duet seasonal album with
Olivia Newton-John.
Re-releases
The album was re-released under the new title of Memories of Christmas,[4] on 13 November 1995 and again on 6 December 1997 with different covers and an altered track list each time.
Background
Johnny Farnham's first No. 1 single on the
Go-Set National Singles Charts was the
novelty song "
Sadie (The Cleaning Lady)" released in 1967.[5] Selling 180 000 copies in Australia, "Sadie (The Cleaning Lady)" was the highest selling single by an Australian artist of the decade.[2][3] His first
Christmas song was a non-album single, "I Saw Mommy Kissing Santa Claus", in November 1968.[6] A
cover of
B. J. Thomas' "
Raindrops Keep Fallin' on My Head" was released in November 1969 and peaked at No. 1 for seven weeks in January–March 1970.[7][8] After his third album, Looking Through a Tear was released in July 1970, a non-album single, "Comic Conversation" was released in October and peaked at No. 10 on the Go-Set National Top 60 Singles Chart.[9] Farnham recorded his fourth album as Christmas Is... Johnny Farnham, it was released in December and contained Christmas songs but did not chart on the Go-Set National Top 20 Albums Chart. One of the songs, "Good Time Christmas", was written by Farnham.[10] The single, "Christmas Happy", was also released in December.
^"Go-Set Australian charts – 6 March 1971". Go-Set. Waverley Press. Archived from
the original on 12 May 2013. Retrieved 6 September 2009. NOTE: Farnham's single is listed as "Cosmic Conversations" [sic] at #52, over its 18-week run it had a peak position of #10.