Tom Jones

Tom Jones’ 50-plus-year career has remarkably gone from strength to strength. Along with sustaining his popularity as a live performer and recording artist for five decades, he has garnered the best reviews of his career for his most recent albums. Critics across the world are unanimous in their approval and admiration for both the recorded work and his live concert performances.

Thomas John Woodward was born at 57 Kingsland Terrace in Treforest in Wales on 7 June 1940, the son of Freda Jones (1914–2003) and coal miner Thomas Woodward (1910–1981).He began singing at an early age; he would regularly sing at family gatherings, weddings, and in his school choir.

Jones was married to his high school girlfriend, Melinda Rose “Linda” Trenchard, from 2 March 1957 until her death from cancer on 10 April 2016. They were married at the age of 16 when she became pregnant; their son, Mark, was born shortly after the wedding. To support his young family, Jones worked in construction and at a glove factory.

He became the frontman in 1963 for Tommy Scott and the Senators, a Welsh beat group. They soon gained a local following and reputation in South Wales. In 1964, the group recorded several solo tracks with producer Joe Meek, who took them to various record labels, but they had little success. Later that year, Decca producer Peter Sullivan saw Tommy Scott and the Senators performing in a club and directed them to manager Phil Solomon, but the partnership was short-lived.

The group continued playing gigs around South Wales. Gordon Mills met Jones, became his manager, and introduced him to London, where Mills worked in music. Mills renamed him “Tom Jones”, to exploit the popularity of the Academy Award-winning 1963 film.

Mills got Jones a recording contract with Decca. His first single, “Chills and Fever”, was released in late 1964 but didn’t chart. The follow-up, “It’s Not Unusual”, became an international hit after offshore pirate radio station Radio Caroline promoted it. The following year was the most prominent of Jones’s career, making him one of the most popular vocalists of the British Invasion.

In early 1965, “It’s Not Unusual” reached No. 1 in the United Kingdom and the top ten in the United States. During 1965, Mills secured a number of film themes for Jones to record, including the James Bond film Thunderball, and What’s New Pussycat? (written by Burt Bacharach and Hal David.

Jones was awarded the Grammy Award for Best New Artist in 1966. During a filming break at Paramount Studios (1965) in Hollywood, Jones met Elvis Presley for the first time; he recalls Presley singing, “With These Hands” as he walked towards him from the film set. The two men became good friends.

In 1966 Jones recorded and released a version of the Claude “Curly” Putman Jr song “Green, Green Grass of Home” (first recorded by singer Johnny Darrell in 1965). The country song was made popular by Porter Wagoner the same year. Jones took the song to number 1 in December, staying there for a total of seven weeks. The song also spent 7 weeks at No. 1 on the Irish Singles Chart.

In 1967, Jones performed in Las Vegas for the first time, at the Flamingo. His performances and style of dress became part of his stage act, and increasingly featured his open, half-unbuttoned shirts and tight trousers. He soon chose to record less and focus on club performances. Jones played in Las Vegas at least one week each year until 2011.

Jones has stated that he had sex with up to 250 groupies a year at his peak of fame. He had affairs with famous American women such as singer Mary Wilson, presenter Charlotte Laws, and former Miss World Marjorie Wallace.

In 1968 “Delilah” by Barry Mason and Les Reed gave Jones another UK number hit. When Jones performed the song on US The Ed Sullivan Show in 1968, the censors (unsuccessfully) attempted to insist that the line “At break of day when the man drove away” be changed to “At break of day I was still ‘cross the way”, as the original version implied that the other man had spent the night with Delilah. Jones later described the proposed change as “such bullshit”.

Jones had an internationally successful television variety show titled This Is Tom Jones from 1969 to 1971. The Associated Television-produced show was worth a reported US$9,000,000 to Jones over three years. It was broadcast by ITV in the UK and by the American Broadcasting Company in the US. From 1980 to 1981, he had a second television variety show, Tom Jones, which was produced in Vancouver, Canada, and lasted 24 episodes.

Following the UK’s 1974 election of a Labour government, Jones became a tax exile to avoid a 98% income tax. In 1976, he purchased the mansion at 363 Copa De Oro Road in the East Gate Bel Air area of Los Angeles from Dean Martin for $500,000. He sold it to Nicolas Cage in 1998 for a reported $6.4 million.

In the 1970s he had a number of hit singles, including “She’s a Lady”, “Till”, and “The Young New Mexican Puppeteer”, but in the mid-1970s his popularity declined. He did, however, have a big hit in 1976 with “Say You’ll Stay Until Tomorrow”, which went to No. 1 on the US country chart.

In the early 1980s, Jones started to record country music. From 1980 to 1986, he had nine songs in the US country top 40, yet failed to crack the top 100 in the UK or the Billboard Hot 100. Jones’s manager Gordon Mills died of cancer on 29 July 1986, and Jones’s son Mark became his manager.

In 1988, British synth-pop group the Art of Noise released a cover of the Prince song “Kiss’, featuring Jones on vocals. Jones had added the song to his Vegas live show and the Art of Noise contacted him after seeing him perform it on TV. The song peaked at No. 5 on the UK Singles Chart.

In 1992, he made his first appearance at the UK’s Glastonbury Festival, and in 1993 he appeared as himself in episodes of The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air (“The Alma Matter”) and The Simpsons (“Marge Gets a Job”).

In 1997 Jones recorded a cover of Randy Newman song “You Can Leave Your Hat On” for the soundtrack of The Full Monty.

In 1999, Jones released the album Reload, a collection of cover duets with artists such as the Cardigans, Natalie Imbruglia, Cerys Matthews, Van Morrison, Mousse T, Portishead, Stereophonics and Robbie Williams. The album went to No. 1 in the UK and sold over 4 million copies worldwide. Five singles from Reload charted in the UK top 40. The single “Sex Bomb” was released in early 2000 and became the album’s biggest single, reaching No.3 on the UK Singles Chart.

Tom Jones was made an Officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE) in 1999 and was knighted by Queen Elizabeth II in 2006 at Buckingham Palace for his services to music. Jones received the Brit Award for Outstanding Contribution to Music in 2003.

On 1 July 2007, Jones was among the artists who performed at Wembley Stadium at the Concert for Diana, joined on stage by guitarist Joe Perry of Aerosmith and soul singer Joss Stone. In addition to performing some of his own songs, the group covered the Arctic Monkeys song “I Bet You Look Good on the Dancefloor”.

In March 2009, Jones went to the top of the UK Charts for the third time with a cover of “Islands in the Stream”, sung with Ruth Jones, Rob Brydon and Robin Gibb, who co-wrote the original with his brothers Barry and Maurice. The record, which was inspired by the song’s having featured in the BBC’s hit sitcom Gavin & Stacey, was released in aid of Comic Relief and reached No. 1 in March 2009. This was his first UK chart topper since “Green, Green Grass of Home” in 1967, setting a new record of 42 years between two UK number ones; this record would be surpassed by Kate Bush when “Running Up That Hill” topped the charts in 2022, a 44-year gap between number ones.

Jones experienced a resurgence in notability in the 2010s due to his coaching role on the BBC talent show The Voice UK from 2012.