As far as I know, he’s the first Welsh Pop singer to achieve international fame and popularity across several generations: I recall my grandparents liked him back in the Seventies.
His appeal for me is that he isn’t afraid to sing anything, namely genre, or with anyone. I think he also knows what not to sing to avoid the Paul Anka-Pat Boone factor of schmaltz. Over the years, he has performed with The Art of Noise (together they covered Prince’s “Kiss,” and it’s the Purple One’s b0day too), Ruby (“Kung Fu Fighting”), Jools Holland in a series of old Bluesy-Boogie Woogie standards and my personal favorites, covers with fellow Welsh acts Stereophonics and Cerys Matthews of Catatonia.
I haven’t bludgeoned you with this before. I had the great fortune to see Tom “do his thing” in Las Vegas, the best place in the world for a Tom Jones concert. What a performer! He did the old hits: “It’s Not Unusual,” “Delilah,” and “What’s New Pussycat” and mixed it up with new things he liked, namely “Walking in Memphis.” Then kicked off the first encore with Lenny Kravitz’s “Are You Gonna’ Go My Way?”
His recent album 24 Hours came out a couple years ago which demonstrated how he hasn’t missed step despite becoming a grandfather.
Finally, the last reason why I admire Tom was from an interview he did with The World Cafe. The host asked an obvious question many of us would love to ask, “Do you ever get tired of singing your older work?” In his trademarked brogue he laughed (you could tell he was smiling back) and said, “Not at all. I’ll stop when people no longer want to hear them.”
Definitely gotta’ dish up my copies of Reload and Tom Jones & Jools Holland to celebrate this week.
This reminded me that in my baby book, under “Popular Entertainers of the Day,” the only thing my mom wrote was “Tom Jones.” My parents were pretty square but who knows…maybe they were visionary!