Tom Jones (singer)
Tom Jones (born June 7, 1940) is a Welsh pop singer with a large and powerful voice. He was born Thomas Jones Woodward in Pontypridd, Wales. He married and had a child at the age of sixteen, long before becoming a pop idol. Despite frequent and much publicized infidelities, including an affair with the dethroned Miss World of 1973, USA's Marjorie Wallace, he has remained married and a family man. He lives in the USA, but makes regular visits to his native land of Wales.
Musical career
He rose to fame in the mid-1960s, with an exuberant live act which included wearing tight breeches and billowing shirts, in an Edwardian style popular amongst his peers at the time.
Following several hits in the UK, he became a Las Vegas lounge singer and his image quickly changed. He was known for his overt sexuality in the 1960s, before this was as common as it became in subsequent years. Ladies would swoon and scream, and in 1968, starting at New York's Copacabana night club, some would throw their panties on stage. Soon after, in Las Vegas, they started throwing hotel room keys.
His early hits include:
- It's Not Unusual (1965)
- What's New Pussycat?, written by Burt Bacharach for Woody Allen's What's New, Pussycat (1965)
- Thunderball, the theme for the James Bond film
- The Green, Green Grass of Home (1966), his most successful single, which became associated with his native Wales, despite being written about the USA
- I'll Never Fall In Love Again (1967)
- Delilah (1968)
- Without Love (1969)
- She's A Lady (1971)
He enjoyed a revival in his career as he started to record with a younger generation of musicians. These recordings included:
- Prince's song Kiss (1988, with The Art of Noise)
- Burning Down The House (1999, with The Cardigans)
- Baby, It's Cold Outside (1999, with Cerys Matthews of Catatonia)
- Mama Told Me Not To Come (2000, with Kelly Jones of the Stereophonics)
- Sex Bomb (2000, with Mousse T)
