Mel Carter

Mel Carter embodied soul music in its mildest form, if one could even place him in that category. He cut sides for Sam Cooke's SAR imprint during the opening years of the 1960s, yet his commercial ascent arrived via Imperial in the decade's midpoint, where he concentrated on middle-of-the-road pop ballads. Those releases actually performed more strongly on the easy listening survey than on the broader pop listing, with his standout success arriving via the 1965 Top Ten pop single "Hold Me, Thrill Me, Kiss Me," a fresh rendering of a song that originated before the rock era. A pair of additional Top 40 entries followed in the ensuing twelve months—"Band of Gold" and "(All of a Sudden) My Heart Sings"—alongside several further strong showings on the easy listening side, where his delivery occasionally evoked a jittery, brisker variant of Johnny Mathis. Decades onward, "Hold Me, Thrill Me, Kiss Me" remained the track most associated with him, continuing to receive regular airplay as a radio staple.