Tom Jones
The coal miner's son from South Wales with a baritone big enough to fill Las Vegas for more than four decades. Born Thomas John Woodward in Pontypridd on June 7, 1940, he was fronting a local beat group as Tommy Scott when manager Gordon Mills renamed him and took him to London. It's Not Unusual reached No.1 in Britain in 1965 and cracked the US Top 10. The run that followed made him one of the biggest acts of the decade on both sides of the Atlantic: What's New Pussycat?, the Thunderball theme, Green, Green Grass of Home, and Delilah.
America took to him quickly. He won the Grammy for Best New Artist in 1966 and hosted This Is Tom Jones on television from 1969 to 1971. She's a Lady reached No.2 on the Billboard Hot 100 in 1971, held off the top only by Janis Joplin's Me and Bobby McGee. He played Las Vegas from 1967 to 2011. When the hits thinned out, he kept reinventing himself: Kiss with the Art of Noise in 1988, the duets album Reload in 1999, which became the biggest seller of his career to that point, and a late run of spare roots records with producer Ethan Johns. He was knighted in 2006. In 2021, Surrounded by Time entered the UK chart at No.1 and made him, at 80, the oldest man ever to top the British album chart.
Articles on Tom Jones
Tom Jones – (It Looks Like) I’ll Never Fall In Love Again
The King of Skiffle wrote it, recorded it, decided he couldn't sing it — and handed it to a young Welshman with the words "you'd sing the pants off it."
Helene Fischer and Tom Jones – Sexbomb (Live – Die Helene Fischer Show)
A Welsh knight of pop in his seventies and Germany's biggest Schlager star turned a 1999 dance hit into one of the most-shared duets German television ever produced.
Tom Jones & Janis Joplin – Raise Your Hand
The tuxedoed Welsh crooner invited the era's most volcanic rock singer onto his prime-time variety show, handed her a Stax soul number, and got thoroughly, gloriously out-sung on his own stage.
Tom Jones – Delilah
A jaunty, flamenco-flecked singalong that is, on close listen, a confession of murder — and more than half a century later it would get a Welsh singer's most beloved terrace song thrown off the rugby stadium playlist.