Give me five.

Frank Sinatra’s fan, I ain’t. I don’t care much for Lata Mangeshkar, either. Give me a Noor Jahan http://digbig.com/4yxxb, a Suraiya, a Geeta Dutt, a Suman Kalyanpur or a Shamshad Begum http://digbig.com/4yxxd any time. But that’s neither here nor there. The story I’m about to tell you is of the very first song in English I remember hearing being played on the family gramaphone http://digbig.com/4yxxe at 233 Khetwadi Main Road. http://digbig.com/4xyxy. The 78 rpm disc had, if memory serves, a blue or green EMI label. The singer probably was young Sinatra. This was in 1946 when I was just ten. He had apparently recorded what may have well been a cover version of the Gordon ‘Tex’ Beneke hit single Give Me Five Minutes More. Tex was the lead singer of the Glen Miller Band in those days. The song in the blues/jazz genre was originally sung by Phil Brito in a B-grade movie called Sweetheart of Sigma Chi. http://digbig.com/4yxxf. The Tex Beneke hit was on the charts for five weeks at the No.4 spot in the US, it seems. I distinctly remember the refrain of the song:

Give me five minutes more, only five minutes more.
Let me stay, let me stay, in your arms.

P.S.: The reason I went to the trouble of Googling the old song is that I have a strong feeling that there is some happy memory connected to it. Try as I might, though, I cannot fathom what.