Tom Jones International

Oops! We forgot and we knew this: Rolling Stone noted on September 17 that: “24 Hours features U2’s Bono and the Edge guesting on Jones’ Sugar Daddy.” This is the song they wrote for Tom and to have them actually back him will bring a whole new audience to the project. It’s great news. You can catch some video of the story here

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Tom’s official website still lists different release date and the name of the CD seems to have been changed, but the publicity is great and we’re thrilled that it’s starting a month out. This Associated Press story is everywhere we look.

As for the “15 years” stuff, just remember, Reloaded and Mr. Jones weren’t released here. Like them, The Lead was released only as an import (we think) and stuff like Reloaded were mostly remasters of old songs. And he’s right, but we think he understates the issue when he calls the failure to release Reload “a shame.” We think it was malpractice on someone’s part….maybe the record company’s.

This time, Tom’s covering a fabulous Springsteen song from the acoustic album, Devils and Dust — an unusual tune for him that we cannot wait to hear him do— and included is the song Bono and The Edge wrote for Mr. Jones that wasn’t used.

So, yes, there’s been nothing new here in years and we’re so happy there is now. Aren’t you? And, for the record, he’s right, he’s a “goodie.”

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Tom Jones to release 1st album in US in 15 years




By JAKE COYLE/AP Entertainment Writer/Sept. 16, 2008




NEW YORK (AP) — After 15 years without a new album in the U.S., Tom Jones will release a disc of almost entirely original material this fall.

The 68-year-old singer will release 24 Hours on Nov. 25 on S-Curve Records. It’s a retro-tinged album much in the style of Amy Winehouse’s Back to Black that finds the Welshman’s voice as strong as ever.

“The fire is still in me,” Jones told The Associated Press in a recent interview, speaking by phone from his home in Los Angeles. “Not to be an oldie, but a goodie. I want to be a contender.”

The disc was produced by British production duo Future Cat, who have cut tracks for Lily Allen, Kate Nash and others. With backing horns and an almost Stax Records kind of soul, the sound is distinctly retro.

“We’ve been thinking about this for a while, doing a retro sound but new,” said Jones. “And Amy Winehouse, she cracked it. When that album came out, my son called me right away and said, `You know what we’ve been talking about? Listen to this.’”

Since he released the hit It’s Not Unusual in 1965, Jones has sold more than 100 million records worldwide. While his 2000 album Reload was a hit in Europe and elsewhere (buoyed by the club hit Sex Bomb), it was never released in the U.S. — which Jones calls “a shame.”

“The hits that I’ve had recently have all been European,” he said. “I’ve had a lot of success worldwide, which is a pain because I live here and I do most of my shows in America. … Hopefully this will straighten that out.”

Jones, who regularly performs in Las Vegas, believes his voice hasn’t aged – thanks partly to his careful treatment of it; he takes a humidifier with him traveling to keep his throat from drying. Jones even believes his lower registers have gotten richer.

“I wanted my voice to sound as natural as possible,” Jones said of the album. “The arrangements and the production needs to be modern, but the vocal needs to sound like me.”

There are two covers on the album – Bruce Springsteen’s The Hitter and I’m Alive by Tommy James and the Shondells – but the rest Jones either co-wrote or collaborated with the songwriters. Bono and the Edge of U2 guest on the song “Sugar Daddy.”

“I love doing the songs that I’ve had success with and the audience keeps those alive,” Jones said. “But I love moving on.”

A UK fan sent us this terrific 1965 story about Tom in New York City. It’s the kind of PR fluff that used to fill fan magazines and that most fans used to devour.

We loved seeing it and hope you will, too. To read the entire story, click the link below:

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Since Mr. Jones wasn’t released in the USA, there was very little publicity here and many people may have missed the PR in the UK. So, we thought we’d post this long (and really good) interview from 2002. We loved it then and haven’t changed our opinion. Here Tom talks about a range of topics relating to himself and has, we think, a realistic picture of who he was and what he represented. He even touches on mortality and marriage. It’s lovely. But, we cannot agree with him about being 40 again, because we think, except for a couple of years early this century, no one could possibly look better. (Of course that’s all a matter of opinion.) At any rate, we decided to add the photos on this page (the CD cover and Tom and Wyclef Jean and Tom at 40) and on the jump page ( the 1980 tour book cover) to break up the long interview (1,500+ words). And, “noughties” is slang for 2000′s (as in this century). It comes from the word “nought,” of course, meaning “zero.” A UK phrase that didn’t gain currency here. We enjoyed what he said about Younger Days and really agree with what Ms. Sullivan says about Tom being of his time and place and about his feminine side. In all, a great interview — except for the “lack of grace to his big Welsh hands,” etc. — and we hope you have as much fun revisiting it — or reading it for the first time — as we did. Enjoy!

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‘When you’re working with bling-blings, you gotta wear bling-blings’

Caroline Sullivan is left breathless by Tom Jones’s hip-hop makeover

Caroline Sullivan/The GuardianThursday October 17 2002

Tom Jones is just three years away from his bus pass, but he still makes a good entrance. At exactly 1pm, the hotel doorbell rings, a PR woman bustles to open it and a penetrating floral aroma fills the room. The smell is Jones, and as he trundles in, it clings like an aura, complementing several hundred thousand dollars’ worth of rocks. There is a Cartier watch, two signet rings and a heavy bracelet, but all of these pale next to the pendulous diamond cross nestling against a furry backdrop of chest.

“Tom,” he says, offering a tanned paw. Lock up your older female relatives – it’s the return of the Pontypridd mack. But if things go according to plan, the medallion-man image that has been his long-term calling card will be supplanted by something a bit more noughties.

He is already a slightly ironic icon to everyone from Robbie Williams, who sang with him at the 1998 Brits, to the band Space, who wrote top five homage The Ballad of Tom Jones. He won the 2000 Best Male Brit award for his 5m-selling album Reload, which features a collection of duets with younger artists. But he hopes his new album, Mr. Jones, will make him iconic minus the ironic. It finds him dabbling his loafers in the only genre he has never got around to trying, hip-hop, and he has done so in the company of rap party-animal Wyclef Jean.

The result, co-written and produced by Jean, is a fairly credible fusion of two mutually exclusive concepts: Jones and beats. Sadly, he doesn’t actually rap — that voice wasn’t built for anything but belting — but the jiggly grooves over which he belts somehow work, and it’s not bad at all.

“It’s about being larger than life, but I was like that when I started,” he says, blearily. Still jetlagged a week after flying to London from his home in Los Angeles, he took two sleeping pills last night. “That’s the only thing about getting older, the jetlag.”

History will judge whether Mr. Jones is remembered as kitsch artifact or new lease of musical life, but right now it stands out amid an autumn-release schedule of Gareths and Wills.

“After Reload, I wanted to try something different, and the ability I have leans more toward R&B, so I wanted to do R&B or hip-hop,” he says, emitting puffs of fragrance as he rests his elbows on the table. (His perfume is called, with cheesy aptness, Scent of Venus.)

“I loved what Wyclef did with the Fugees, especially Killing Me Softly. He stripped it down and turned it into something different from the original.”

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Those Welsh do love their polls, don’t they? But, if The Voice is named, it’s usually all good. We’re fairly certain he’s the oldest on this list — most are in their 20s and 30s — and, too, that he will always be on it. And, when you consider the ages of the others, we wonder how many will be there at Sir Tom’s age. To underscore the point, we added the photos over the years. All we can say is, “You go, Tom!”




Wales’ top 50 sexiest men

Sep 13 2008 by Our Correspondent, Western Mail

46 TOM JONES
HE’S 68 years old, yet grown women still feel compelled to throw their knickers at him. Like a fine wine the Treforest singer just keeps on getting better.