Tom Jones International

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This post will have to do until Tuesday, as no one much has time for the internet on a beautiful last-weekend-of-summer. . Also, if you haven’t seen them, be sure to scroll down this page and back to the previous one to catch up on what you may have missed and, please, enjoy the rest of your weekend!

By the way, if you have a moment and have collected photos you or other fans have taken of Tom for many years, check to see if you have any for the TJI 2010 Fan Calendar (the formal call for photos will be coming soon) and any other memorabilia to share with fans via this site. Thanks!

Before I get into the specifics of this post, I have to note that we Tom Jones fans are very fortunate to number among us some very generous people; people like Pat, Norman, Johan, Chas and several others. They are European fans who have extensive and exciting libraries of old TJ TV shows, video, interviews and photos that they are so kind about sending me to share with you. The one here is from Norman and wait ’til you see what else he’s sent!

A Tale of Two Entertainers is a 27-minute BBC documentary produced and broadcast in 1966 contrasting the careers of Tom Jones and dancer Lynn Seymour as they were starting out. (Note the smile playing on Tom’s lips in the very first shot of him singing Pussycat.)

Of course we all know where Tom — er, that’s Sir Tom! — is today. Lynn Seymour, born in Canada in 1939 (all the bios say this documentary erred in the date), entered the Sadler’s Wells Ballet School at the age of 14. In 1957 she joined the Royal Ballet. She retired as a dancer in 1978 but still, I believe, lectures and teaches.

You’ll notice that the (almost-Python-parody-like) narrator says, rather skeptically, that Tom’s “publicity handout” says he was 23 (born in 1942) at the time….shortly thereafter he owned up to his age.

You can watch the it in the TJI.com Video Library.

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Last Minute Update: Back in the UK and talking to Wales Online in the bar of the “ultra-swanky Mandarin Oriental Hotel in Knightsbridge,” (Hasn’t he earned the right to stay at the Mandarin Oriental? Should he stay at a Motel 6? Why do they have to make a crack about his accommodations? Oh, right, it’s the Welsh press once again being snide about the one Welsh export everyone in the world has heard about.) Anyway, Tom tells this tale of Glastonbury’s sound system — which, all the footage of the set shows he handled like the pro he is — and reminisces about Elvis and the early days in Las Vegas. And, oh yes, the tale of Elvis and the shower.

How Tom Jones coped with the unusual

Sep 7 2009 by Nathan Bevan, Western Mail

HE’S seen everything thrown at him onstage during his long, successful, singing career, from underwear, hotel room keys and notes with phone numbers written in lipstick.

But yesterday it emerged that at this year’s Glastonbury Festival Sir Tom Jones faced something he’d never seen before in more than 40 years of performing – a sea of blank looks.

Last night the legendary Pontypridd singer revealed that the triumphant set, which won him a new generation of fans in June, almost ended as an embarrassing disaster thanks to a technical fault.

“They said I shouldn’t talk about it,” said the Voice of The Valleys from the bar of the ultra-swanky Mandarin Oriental Hotel in Knightsbridge, “but I’m going to anyway. The speakers had been turned off for some reason so no-one at the front could hear me.”

Shocked and worried that his act might be bombing, the 69-year-old sex bomb tried to counter the mass indifference by throwing even more of his trademark killer moves, but as the gig went on there was still no peep from the crowd.

“Four songs I did like that. Four songs!” he spluttered.

Not that anyone sitting at home would’ve noticed mind, especially given that the rest of the set was the type of triumph that assured any little glitches would have been forgotten by the time the evergreen, and now resplendently grey crooner, had bid his final farewells.

“Glastonbury was great though,” he smiled.

“They were all shouting, ‘We want Tom, We want Tom’ before I came on and the Red Dragon was flying high – so, as a result, I was too.”

It’s surprising to find that, despite all the success he’s attained, Sir Tom talks about himself with a great degree of humility, as though he still can’t quite believe everything that’s happened to him. It’s a down-to-earth quality he says is chiefly the result of his Valleys’ upbringing.

“It’s good I had experience of the real world before I got famous,” he told a London newspaper.

“That having to get up early in the morning and go up and down on an ladder with bricks on my shoulder, just living for the weekend.

“So when I realised I could get paid just for singing, to do what I loved, I thought: ‘This is unbelievable!’”

There’s just that element of disbelief when he’s asked to meet his idol Elvis Presley for the first time, not long after It’s Not Unusual launched him to stardom in 1965.

“When I arrived in the States, people were saying: ‘But you can’t be Tom Jones – you’re white’,” he laughed.

“And I remember Elvis saying the same thing: ‘How the hell do you sing like this?’ And I said: ‘You’re partly to blame, you know’.”

The two quickly struck up a strong rapport and The King took an interest in Tom’s career, even giving him advice on what to record.

“Quite soon after we met, I made an album of swing standards,” he said.

“Elvis looked at me and went: ‘Tom, I like it, but we don’t do standards. We leave that to people like Frank Sinatra’. We! I couldn’t believe he was including me with him.

“And then a few weeks later – and this is the God’s honest truth – Frank Sinatra said to me, ‘You’re a great standards singer, Tom. You should do more old stuff like that’.

“I was just thinking: ‘My God, what a position to be in. Sinatra telling me one thing and Elvis telling me another!”

Tom added it seemed Elvis was always right there for him, even if sometimes he wished he wasn’t – like the time he’d come off stage at Caesar’s Palace in Vegas and decided to freshen up.

“Elvis was in my dressing room, so I said: ‘I’m just going to have a shower and I’ll be right with you’,” recalled Tom.

“So. I’m in there washing my hair and I suddenly hear this singing. I open my eyes and there he is standing in there next to me!” he laughed.