"I've always felt myself as being a serious singer," Jones said, "even if. Now, older, and finally greyer, he regrets. famously the target on stage of women throwing their underpants at him. He was more than just a singer, of course he was a sex symbol. His TV show - "This is Tom Jones" - was a living room favorite in the late Sixties and early Seventies on both sides of the Atlantic. Other musical tastes could come and go, but Tom Jones belting it out would always be there. But when the record company executives heard it, they knew it had to be his. Tom's lungs - and what they allowed him to do with a song - became a ticket to a whole other life.Īfter trying to get a break playing the pubs and working men's clubs of Wales, he cut a demo tape of a song that was supposed to be for another singer. The doctors told him, "'Whatever you do, you cannot go down the coal mine,' because of my lungs," Jones said. Recovering from TB turned into the best bad thing that ever happened to him. You know, I always had that, since I was a child."įor two years he was confined to a room in a house around the corner, where the family had moved. "But my dream was always to be a professional singer. "Oh yeah, I would have been a coal miner, I would think, if I hadn't had tuberculosis when I was 12," Jones said. And he would have followed the predicted path if not for an accident of health. Tom visited the house where he was born, in 1940, as Tommy Woodward. It was not only good steady work it was just about the only work. "My father was a coal miner, and both his brothers were coal miners," Jones said.Īnd Tom, too, seemed destined for a working life down the mines. It's a return to the simple ways and musical values that he grew up with. The new Tom Jones CD is almost a repudiation of the glitzy pop career he's enjoyed for five decades. If I shut myself off so I can’t hear you cry, If I just turn away, when I see how you’re dressed, His new album has shocked his fans and surprised the critics. Watch Web Exclusive Interview With Tom Jones But in a lot of ways, including musically, he's coming home. He's come a long way from Pontypridd, the town in the Welsh coal mining valleys where he was born. ![]() Tom Jones - Sir Tom Jones - is now 70, and he's feeling a little nostalgic. "Yea, yea, I wasn't expecting to sing today but. in this case while reminiscing in the chapel where he went to Sunday school. The other predictable event is that, before long. "It looks the same from up here, I must say," he replied. The first is, you ask him the dumb but irresistible question: "Does the old town look the same?" ![]() ![]() You don't have to spend much time with Tom Jones around the green, green grass of his hometown of Pontypridd, in Wales, before two predictable things happen. Mark Phillips profiles the pop superstar who these days is looking both back and forward on his life. Tom Jones' latest album is a return to the simple ways and musical values that he grew up with.
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