My song today is, ‘When the Girl in Your Arms Is The Girl In Your Heart’. This was a 1961 hit by Cliff Richard and was written by the songwriting team of Sid Tepper and Roy Bennett, who would contribute fifteen songs to the Cliff Richard canon including his career record ‘The Young Ones’. "
Recorded in January 1961, ‘When the Girl in Your Arms...’ was not released until that October as the first advance single for the Cliff Richard movie vehicle ‘The Young Ones’. The track reached a chart peak of Number 3 in the UK and gave Richard a Number 1 hit in the Netherlands, Norway (for eight weeks) and South Africa. It was a Number 2 hit in Australia and was also a Number 4 hit in Belgium/Flemish Region and a Number 7 hit in New Zealand.
xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
I was 19 years old when this song was first released, and although I was a popular and attractive young man brimming with confidence and ‘too full of himself’, my greatest weakness was to instantly ‘fall in love’ with every attractive girlfriend I ever held in my arms.
I don’t know why I was always like this with my new girlfriends, especially as I wanted to travel to America when I was 21 years old and hadn’t the slightest intention of settling down to a life of marriage, parenthood, and domesticity until I’d rid myself of my wanderlust.
Ever since being a boy between the ages of 9-11 years when I used to attend an Old Time Dancing School in Milnsbridge, Liversedge, called the ‘Kier Hardy’ there was hardly a day went by when my mind didn’t turn to some girl I’d recently met. I’d always loved dancing, ever since I realised that the dance floor was the sure gateway to future romance. Whenever the group did a dance that rotated partners, I could never wait until the most attractive girl in the room had returned back into my arms.
I was never much of a Cliff Richard fan, with the exception of three or four of his songs, and although I always considered this song, ‘When the Girl In Your Arms…’ a trifle too sweet and sugary a rendition, its ability to instantly recall my Old Time Dancing years as a young boy was enough to make it into my musical memory.
Love and peace Bill xxx