My song today is ‘Hold Me, Thrill Me, Kiss Me’. This song was written by Harry Noble and originally performed by Karen Chandler in 1952. It has been re-recorded several times since then, the most notable covers being by Mel Carter in 1965 and Gloria Estefan in 1994.
The version most often associated with the song was recorded by Mel Carter and was released in 1965 on ‘Imperial Records’. Carter's version spent 15 weeks on the ‘Billboard Hot 100’ chart, peaking at Number 8 while reaching Number 1 on Billboard’s ‘Easy Listening’ chart, and Number 2 on Canada’s ‘RPM Play Sheet’, and Number 4 on Canada's ‘Chum Hit Parade’.
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I was 9 years old when this song was first released but was 21 years old when it became highly popular and registered with me. There is one line in the song that resonates with the wild romantic years of my late teens:
‘Kiss me, kiss me, when you do, I know you’ll miss me, me’
When I was in my 14th and 15th year of life, I would often spend part of my evenings up on the roof of the shed that all estate properties had then. The shed was a brick building that was attached to the house. Dad would keep his bicycle in there along with all his tools and other bits and bats. The shed roof, however, was an ideal spot for doing all sorts, Sometimes I would have a smoke of a cigarette up on top of the shed roof with a mate or we’d just laze about and tell tales.
My next-door neighbour was Mrs. Hinchcliffe and her two children. We never saw her son as he had some condition that led him never to come out during the daytime. His sister was called Sylvia, and she was about three years older than I was. I never looked any older than I was, so I always assumed that Sylvia felt more comfortable being in the company of younger lads than herself.
Now, let me say, that every teenager, needing to explore the realms of all possibility once they start feeling pleasantly different in the company of more sexually nubile females, need a Sylvia Hinchcliffe as a ‘life coach’. Sylvia was game for most stuff that a 15-year-old might expect to get away with on a sunny evening up on the roof. We would frequently engage in those more common rites to adult activities of, ‘I will if you will’ or ‘show me, don’t tell me’, or ‘touch and taste’. I was never quite sure if Sylvia was simply sharing her wider knowledge of the world with me or whether she was engaged in a better understanding it, and merely extending her experience. Suffice it to say, I did not mind either way. It was ten times better than secretly looking at scantily dressed women in the lingerie section of the Littlewoods catalogue.
I would have been hard-pressed to find a better teacher, but the most important thing that Sylvia taught me was the art of kissing. She used to say, most people think that kissing is simply plonking a pair of lips on someone else’s, and hoping for a nice reaction, but it isn’t! She was so right. Sylvia essentially taught me that being a good kisser didn’t necessarily involve entwining mingling tongues in some sensuous saliva exchange or diving down someone’s throat and not coming back up for air for the next twenty seconds.
What Sylvia essentially taught me was ‘not to rush’ and never to show yourself as being ‘too eager to kiss’ the other person. The secret is first to silently suggest that 'you might kiss them' imminently, but as they move in closer to kiss you also, at the very last moment before your lips touch theirs, you pull back in a kind of romantic tease. Silvia taught me that this little tease adds to the mounting excitement the next time you advance your salivating mouth towards their trembling lips. As an early disciple of breathing and relaxation techniques (meditative disciplines I learned when I could not walk for three years following a bad road accident which damaged my spine at the age of 11 years), Sylvia’s relaxed approach towards sensual pleasure naturally appealed to my mind.
What I learned from Sylvia Hinchcliffe more than anything else is that a kiss can either be a big disappointment and a massive let down, or it can also be the perfect introduction of better things to come. That is why I have always known after the very first kiss with any female whether we have a connection or not that is worth pursuing. It does not take me six months living as man and wife to find this out. It does not take anything else but one moment and one kiss to tell me if this is true for me, and I very much suspect that it is the same in reverse.
That is why I always had a young woman on my arm and by my side, or in hot pursuit when I was a wild twenty-year-old romantic at the height of my pulling power during the early 1960s. My secret weapon of the romantic explosion was 'the kiss' to ignite their passion enough to throw all caution to the wind. It was because I knew that once they lent close and I let them kiss me, they were hopelessly lost in the mist of love.
‘Kiss me, kiss me, when you do, I know you’ll miss me, me’
Love and peace Bill xxx