Tom Jones International

A few things crossed TJI’s computer screen today that will not be posted. Among them was a really rude story from a trashy UK daily about Sir Tom’s management. It was correct in saying that Sir Tom’s son/manager Mark Woodward has done some really good things for his dad’s career. But the rest was trashy speculation that has, sadly, become typical of these rags. Remember, please don’t believe everything you read…..Also, the stalker fan chimed in with a silly comment that, naturally, didn’t get posted. I am noting that in the hope that those fans who will be in Las Vegas will decline to interact with her when she is here. She doesn’t deserve consideration from anyone.

The Word On: Praise and Blame, Tom Jones

The Friday, 30 July 2010 edition of The Independent did a rundown of some reviews of Praise and Blame

“He’s done more than shallowly recasting himself as a gospel-and-blues interpreter. He’s reached deep and tapped into the real stuff… a stark, soul-probing study in imminent mortality.” - avclub.com

“This new direction shouldn’t come as a surprise, but it somehow does. If you’ve never even considered owning a Tom Jones record before, give Praise & Blame a try. It may well surprise you.” —musicomh.com

“He’s managed to make himself something highly unusual for a man at this stage of his career: unclassifiable. Unpredictable. He’s the Lady Gaga of Elvis impersonators, at once of the moment and eternal, disposable and persistently present. And, to address that record executive’s four question marks, Tom Jones is no joke.” – npr.org

We missed two of the full reviews. The very complimentary review from National Public Radio here.

The other two are:

Tom Jones – Praise & Blame (Island) UK release date: 26 July 2010

by John Murphy /musicomh.com

Let’s call it ‘doing a Johnny Cash’. Artist of a certain age hooks up with a ‘name’ producer to record an album of stripped down cover versions, leading to both critical acclaim and a whole new audience.

For the rest of this review and the other one, please click here to (more…)

A new 30-second commercial for Praise and Blame has been unveiled in the UK.

You can watch it here. Hopefully, with the CD of all-American music doing quite well this early on, it will get the attention and promotion it merits in America.

Tom was also on BBC Radio 2 yesterday with Liza Tarbuck (with him at left).. She, interestingly, is the daughter of Jimmy Tarbuck, Sir Tom’s old friend from back in the day. The link to that 21+-minute interview is at the bottom of this post.

The article below was written by Neil McCormick, a classmate of Bono’s, The Edge, Larry Mullin and Adam Clayton (in other words, the guys in U2) when he was growing up in Dublin. He wrote about that in a book called I Was Bono’s Dopplegänger, that is now being made into a film called Killing Bono,

Of the book — which I read and is very good — Bono says, “I was Neil McCormick’s fan in school. He was much cooler than me, a much better writer and I thought he’d make a much better rock star. I was wrong on one count. He’s written a great book.”

Tom Jones: the oldest swinger in the charts

By Neil McCormick Music Last updated: July 29th, 2010The Telegraph

If midweek sales hold up, 70-year-old Tom Jones is on course to becoming the oldest man to top the British album charts. Jones previously held the record as a mere stripling of 59, when his contemporary pop duets set Reloaded went to number one in 1999. But he was superseded by then 68-year-old Bob Dylan last year with Together Through Life. Now Jones is poised to take the crown back, with an album or raw rocking gospel music, Praise And Blame.

The old guys are but spring chickens (well, autumn chickens, maybe) compared to Dame Vera Lynn, who got to number one last year aged 92, although that was with a compilation album recorded in her prime.

Age used to be one of the battlegrounds of pop culture. Now, one has to almost wax nostalgic to think back to a time when fans debated whether this or that artist was too old to rock and roll. Do you remember when critics liked to poke fun at veteran rockers, referring to the Glimmer twins Mick Jagger and Keith Richards as the Zimmerframe Twins? It turned out that rock was not really a flashpoint for youthful rebellion but just another form of music. And music is for life. And life is long.

I have to admit, when I was an 18-year-old punk, I never imagined I would be a middle-aged rock critic. But the charts are still full of people who are older than me, and it is we middle-aged consumers who are keeping the music industry afloat. More than half of all CDs are bought by people over thirty, less than a fifth by people under twenty. Mind you, the young are still consuming just as much music, its just that they are not paying for it. Legal downloads are still dwarfed by the illegal. The international trade body IFPI has estimated that 95 per cent of music downloads worldwide are illegal. And there are figures bandied about the American music business (of which, I must admit, I am a little sceptical) claiming over 70 per cent of Americans under 20 years old have never paid for a piece of music. The generation gap is no longer about the music, it’s about the technology used to consume it.

Well, we all know the music industry is in trouble. But in the meantime, it may be up to the oldies to keep us rocking.

The thing about Jones’ continuing success is that he genuinely deserves it. He has made a great record, raw and alive with a love of music, shot through with emotional veracity and vital performances. People are talking about this as a religious album, and, indeed, the vice-president of his own record company notoriously dismissed it as “hymns” but actually this is the record of a sinner, engaging with God, the Devil and his own fears of mortality and redemption.

For the rest of this article, the four-star review and the link to the radio interview, please click here to (more…)

I want to thank all of you who have been reading these long posts and who take the time to comment. Today’s post is a bit shorter. But, before we get to it, I had an email from Michael, a fan who is a regular visitor to TJI.com. He has a ticket for the show at the MGM that he’d like to sell. He writes: I have a single ticket available for Friday, August 6th. It is toward the front at table 109. You will be sitting with some incredibly nice people from Boise. We are just trying to sell it for face value as one of our group had to drop out at the last minute! If you are interested in the ticket, use the email link at right and I’ll put you in touch with Michael.

As of of 5 a.m. BST Thursday morning, Praise and Blame was #2 in Music > Pop and #1 in Music > Easy Listening on amazon.co.uk. On amazon.com it is #7 in Music and #2 in Music > Pop > Vocal Pop. Like of Tom’s fans, and as someone who loves the music, I am thrilled that it’s doing so well. But, really: “easy listening?” “vocal pop?” Come on! Get real!

OK, first up today is another article about how Sir Tom, when Praise and Blame ascends to #1 will take back the record of being the oldest person to have a UK chart topper. As the article (which has a large factual error — can you find it?) details, at age 59 Tom had that distinction. But, last year, Bob Dylan took the top spot at age 68. Nice news and, both Bob Dylan and Tom Jones are very deserving of this distinction. There is no comparing the two. Tom’s voice towers over Dylan’s. But Dylan began to be noticed in Gerde’s Folk CIty in Manhattan in 1961, And consider the songs he’s written. These include Blowin’ in the Wind, A Hard Rain’s Gonna Fall, Knockin’ On Heaven’s Door (a particular favorite of you moderator’s and, if you ask, she’ll surely tell you why) and What Good Am I? So, do remember, please, comparisons are odious and do not indulge here.

The two reviews here — even the lukewarm one — give Sir Tom tremendous credit for his work and for the power of the new CD — check out the last sentence of each. The article from The Guardian, in addition to the big error (understandable only if the writer is American) still mentions panty-tossing and aged fans. Haven’t we heard enough of that? I’m sure Tom and his management have. And, does he really want to record with Eminem? Or was he being polite? (It’s mean, but I can think of one Eminem fan would would be appalled, as would her mother, a TJ fan. So I hope he does.)

Tom Jones on course to top album charts

Welsh singer set to knock Eminem off top spot with 40th studio album, Praise & Blame, but hints at collaboration with rapper

Alexandra Topping/The Guardian/28 July 2010 18.18 BST

It’s not unusual to be loved by anyone, as Wales’ favourite crooner has been reminding us for a good 45 years. It is, on the other hand, slightly out of the ordinary to be loved by so many that you manage to chalk up a number one album in your 70s, as Pontypridd’s finest may achieve this Sunday with his 40th studio album Praise & Blame.

Sir Tom Jones, who was today sitting at number one in the midweek chart sales, is on course to become the oldest male musician to have a number 1 album this Sunday, if he knocks Eminem off the top spot.

What may be more unusual still is a thinly-veiled suggestion from the septuagenarian sexbomb that he would be like to collaborate with the Detroit rapper currently in pole position. “I couldn’t be more proud of this album and I’m really blown away by the response from everyone,” he said. “It’s great to be top of the charts with Eminem, maybe next time we could be top together.”

Although the link-up may appear incongruous to some, Jones is likely to be unfazed. As a young man he worked with legends such as Elvis, Stevie Wonder and the Beatles and in recent years has hooked up with artists as diverse as Robbie Williams, Van Morrison and Cerys Matthews.

Speaking on the telephone while touring the UK to promote his new album – a critically-lauded collection of gospel and blues-infused songs – Jones, who turned 70 last month, said he had no qualms about being the oldest artist to top the charts.

“For me that would be the icing on the cake,” he said. “It’s great to see the album doing so well in the midweeks but if I don’t get to number one, I don’t get the record – and I do want it.”

Jones previously held the record when his 1999 album, Reloaded[sic], went to number one. But he lost the crown to Bob Dylan – just a year younger than Jones – when last year’s Together Through Life took the top spot.

He is proud of the album – which some are calling his “Johnny Cash moment”, a reference to the country star’s late, reflective American recordings – although Jones rejects any suggestion that he might be on his last legs.

For the rest of this article and the reviews, click here to (more…)

Some Notes From Your Moderator: I am not sure if I’ll be able to post every day in the coming weeks as all this news means a very long time preparing posts — today, more than three hours (with the video). I am not complaining. But I have a huge book deadline looming and a couple of important interviews. Of course, I have to get that kind of thing done in an attempt to earn a living and keep body and soul apart.. But, I was able to accomplish some TJ-related stuff today:

1. Crooner??? I saw on a photo site a lot of photos of Tom leaving BBC Radio studios this morning. He was accompanied by his son and manager Mark. The site listed the latter’s name as “Mark Jones.” I dropped them a note to correct that. The response was very quick so, while I was at it, I sent the nice lady at the site a note requesting they “Please!!!, stop referring to Sir Tom as a ‘crooner.’ Engelbert, Tony Bennett, Michael Bublé — they are crooners. Tom is a singer…..Never heard him croon and using that word to describe him annoys his fans and, probably, would annoy him.” She replied that she’d removed the offending word from the caption and passed the note to her photo editor. But, she said, many of the photo services send photos already captioned so, I’d suggest, when you see a photo so captioned, drop a note to the site where you found it.

2. Tracks? When I got my Praise and Blame CD from amazon.com, I noticed that, despite the fact that their own site lists 12 tracks on the CD, it only had 11. I wasn’t the only one to notice, as a few other people wrote me about it. I spoke to amazon and they offered a refund and, more important, said they saw the discrepancy and will check it out. I’ll keep you posted.

3. AND!! A terrific radio interview! The photo left is of Sir Tom with Christopher Moyles just as they ended Tom’s interview with Moyles on BBC Radio 1. Check the bottom of this post for a link to the 43-minute + interview (one song by a girl group from Wales is thrown in).

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Interview: Tom Jones, legendary soul singer

Published Date: 27 July 2010 / By Aidan Smith /Scotland On Sunday

At the age of 70, Tom Jones has stopped dyeing his hair and started to do a little soul-searching instead.

What did he find? 

He walks towards me slowly and straight-legged, as if he’s wearing leather trousers and it’s 1969 all over again. More specifically, as if the breeks had been left out in the sun since ’69 and gone stiff. Of course, if you remember when this man was big in Vegas, star of his own American TV show and the up-all-night drinking buddy of Elvis Presley, there was a special feature of the strides that would make them even more problematic for a man of 70 today. They were at least a size too small. Deliberately so. Yes, madam, I thought you’d remember that … 
But it’s a wee shame I’ve mentioned leather trousers this early because a closer inspection of Sir Tom Jones reveals he’s opted for jeans. 



For the rest of this interview, the articles about TJ and Eminem, 7 (!) reviews of the CD and Sir Tom on BBC Radio Tuesday morning, click here to (more…)

The CD appears to be doing well on amazon in both the US and UK. Official charts are out the end of the week. Meanwhile, if you hear it and you like it, by all means go to your local amazon site, as well as other music sales sites and write a review!!!

Today there are two interviews.The first is from my favorite news blog, The Huffington Post — where without doubt you will find the best writing; the most provocative, interesting interviews:) This phone interview — at almost 4,000 words — is particularly interesting because of the questions. No rehashing of email-gate. Instead, there’s a good conversation about the recording process, of the way songs were chosen and, best of all, none of the usual shallow tabloid questions. Mr. Ragnona knows his stuff and Sir Tom clearly appreciated that. From a fan’s (and writer’s) point of view this is the best of all the interviews I’ve seen (and I think I’ve seen ‘em all!) about the CD from any source.

The second is from the Wall Street Journal and, as befits that newspaper, it is respectful (“Mr.”) and pleasant.

Following are some reviews that range from 2-stars up to an “A.”

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Praise & Blame: A Conversation With Tom Jones

Mike Ragogna: Your new album Praise & Blame has a very stripped down sound. What was your philosophy going into making this record? Tom Jones: Well, I’ve been wanting to do something like this for a long time, and some of the albums I’ve done in the past, one or two tracks sometimes have been like this–stripped down. I’ve always liked that…not for all songs, but for songs of this nature especially. I feel you don’t need a lot on them musician-wise. I think this is the best way to approach it, for me anyway. And I think it shows the voice off, and you can hear the tonal quality of the vocals. We took a lot of time picking the keys to get them in the right keys. We wanted to do some of the slower songs low because my voice over the years has become lower and richer.

MR: Your very first track, What Good Am I, seems to pull off its big message with even more emotion than the original. TJ: First of all, to approach it the way we did, the only version I had heard before that was from Bob Dylan. I wanted to slow it down and give it more depth. The lyrics already had them. The depth was already there, but the tonal quality…

So, we did it in a low key, and Ethan Johns said, “Look if you think it will work, sing it as softly as you can. Don’t push it at all, and let it come out very natural,” and that’s what I did. Normally, when I sing, if I start to go up in the register, I get louder. That’s what happened. But with this, you try not to control it, so that’s what I did, it’s what we ended up with.

MR: Can you go into the recording process? TJ: We recorded it in Peter Gabriel’s studio in Wilshire, so we were trying it out in the afternoon. We broke for dinner, and normally, once we do that, we wait until the following day to have another go at it. So, when we were having dinner, we were talking about it and I had had a couple of glasses of wine and I said, “You know, I think I’ve got it now in my mind. Maybe we should go back and try it again.” I think everybody felt more mellow–maybe it was due to the red wine. But I definitely felt more relaxed, and everybody seemed to be like that. We just let it flow…not to over do, over sing, or punch it too hard–just to sing it as quietly and as breathy as possible. And then when we listened to it back we realized that this was it. We had it. You know, normally I don’t drink before I sing. I like to keep a clear mind, but it was just a glass of red wine that might have helped.

MR: That brings us to that mega-voice of yours. I was told you had to record quite a distance from the microphone for some of the rockers on this album. TJ: Yeah. Well, I think the difference with my voice today is that it’s richer than it used to be. So, I think if I had done it 30 years ago, it may not have had as much weight to it. So, I think this definitely benefits from experience and the tonal quality of my voice. But the material itself…

MR: What went into the song choices? TJ: I used to do songs like this in Wales growing up. If I went to Sunday school at 2:30 on a Sunday afternoon, to the Presbyterian Chapel, we did a lot of gospel hymns which I didn’t realize was gospel until later on. Not as much as they do in the Southern states, but the songs are definitely there with the gospel element.

For instance, when I was in Las Vegas with Elvis Presley–God bless him when he was still alive–we would hang out at night in his suite and we would sing mostly gospel songs because he loved gospel, and he would start to sing these songs and I would join in. He asked me, “How come you know these songs?” and I said, “Well, we sing them in Wales, not exactly as you do.” Now I do, but not when I was a kid so much. But the songs were definitely there.

MR: Are there songs on this record that do come from your childhood? TJ: I knew Run On. Of course, I got that one from Elvis. But I got a lot of the gospel things I have done before. The Mahalia Jackson tunes were on BBC radio when I was growing up in the ’40s and ’50s. I think Mahalia Jackson was the biggest gospel singer that we had heard from the States…and Sister Rosetta Tharpe.

For the rest of this interview and three US reviews, click here to (more…)

Great News??? Check this out!: On the top is amazon in the UK; the bottom is in the USA. The product to which they are referring is, of course, Praise and Blame. Isn’t this terrific?

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If you missed the posts from Friday, Saturday and/or Sunday — some new video and audio included — don’t forget to check them out. Some good stuff there. Today Tom’s new CD is released in the UK; tomorrow, elsewhere. Please hold your reviews here, as explained in the post below. Enjoy it! It’s the best! And, please watch TJI for video of Sir Tom on TV, too.

I haven’t done a word-for-word reread of every article posted lately, but I have pretty much concluded that many that appear in UK news outlets are called “exclusive” when, in truth, they’re mash-ups of other articles. For example, the one just below has no byline. You cannot tell me that a genuine journalist who interviewed someone like Tom Jones would not see to it that the article appeared with a byline….this is just more UK tab garbage. At least here in the US everyone knows the Enquirer, The Star, The Globe and News of the World are all pretty fake. Yet, even some of them occasionally manage to have a genuine news story.

Music legend Tom Jones on his stunning stripped-down comeback

Jul 25 2010 Sunday Mail

TOM JONES yesterday told how he has recorded one of the most astonishing albums of his career – just weeks after hitting 70.

Tomorrow, the Welsh superstar releases Praise And Blame, a stunning collection of gospel, traditional and spiritual songs which critics are already hailing as his finest work.

And the veteran sex bomb, who still has adoring female fans chucking their underwear on stage, says he is thrilled to be back making waves at an age when other stars are hanging up their microphones.

He is determined to keep on singing for as long as his amazing voice holds out and his punishing tour schedule puts much younger performers to shame.

Sir Tom said: “I was looking forward to hitting 70 in June. To have reached that age is fantastic. I don’t feel it. My health is good and I’m doing great. I might be a little slower than when I was younger but things haven’t changed that much.

“Getting to this age has its ups. You learn to appreciate different forms of music. You can’t really put an old head on young shoulders. You have got to go through life experiencing things.

Praise And Blame features his latest single Burning Hell – a John Lee Hooker cover – and has been the focus of controversy.

In 2009, Jones quit EMI to sign a s1.5 million deal with Island Records and worked with producer Ethan Johns, the man behind hits by Kings Of Leon, Paolo Nutini and Rufus Wainwright.

Their plan was to make a raw, stripped down album in the style of the American Recordings series by the late Johnny Cash and US producer Rick Rubin.

But a leaked email from Island executive David Sharpe left the superstar furious. It said: “I walked in to hear hymns coming from your office. My initial pleasure came to an abrupt halt when I realised Tom Jones was singing the hymns. I want to know if this is some sick joke.

“We did not invest a fortune in an established artist for him to deliver 12 tracks from the common book of prayer. This is not what was agreed and certainly not what we paid for. You need to pull back t his project immediately or get my money back.”

The veteran singer blew his top when the story hit the headlines and admits he’s been kept well away from Sharpe …

For the rest of this article, another review from the Independent, a very silly (non-) news story and a link to the radio interview, click here to (more…)

çTomorrow, a radio interview, some more silly news, maybe a review. And, the August Question of the Month will be about your reviews of Praise and Blame. So, please hold any comments or they will be deleted. I’ve heard every song and I’ve managed not to share my opinion and, if someone who does reviews for a living can manage to keep it to herself, then you can, too. But do enjoy it.

OK, so this reviewer called it the “equivalent” of J. Cash’s late work, but he also called the Island Records VP “cloth-eared” and suggested he was in the wrong line of work. Sadly, he said the exec, one David Sharpe, is “anonymous.” Should have named him but, still, this is all good. Check it out:

Reviewed by Andy Gill/Friday, 23 July 2010/The Independent

Embarrassingly denigrated as a “cruel joke” by some cloth-eared Island executive, Praise & Blame is Tom Jones’s equivalent of Johnny Cash’s American series of back-to-the-roots albums, an association confirmed by its inclusion of the song that gave Cash’s final album its title, Ain’t No Grave.

That anonymous executive should be squirming, not just for his faux pas, but for apparently being in the wrong line of work, as Praise & Blame is clearly one of the best albums of Jones’s entire career. The ingenious Ethan Johns handles production chores on the collection of blues and gospel standards, and he’s devised a blend of raucous blues riffs in the skeletal style of The White Stripes or The Black Keys, punctuated by more subtly-textured arrangements for reflective pieces such as Dylan’s What Good Am I? and Ain’t No Grave, which with its relaxed guitar fingerpicking and decorative tints of pedal steel over a gentle tattoo of drum and tambourine strongly recalls T-Bone Burnett’s work on Raising Sand.

The material has been chosen to reflect both Jones’s roots in the gospel and blues traditions of the late 1950s, and to offer a loose thematic unity based on the notion of a spiritual rite of passage. Accordingly, tracks such as Didn’t It Rain and Strange Things are tackled with a rolling guitar boogie shuffle that harks straight back to Sister Rosetta Tharpe, with jaunty piano added to the latter’s later stages, in the unobtrusive but crucial manner of Johnnie Johnson on Chuck Berry’s hits; while the former features a pleasing elastic tug back and forth between the guitar and voice, which acts like a coiled mainspring at the heart of the song. Further echoes of early rock’n'roll can be discerned in several other songs: Don’t Knock is a Little Richard-style gospel-rock rave-up, while at the opposite extreme, Billy Joe Shaver’s If I Give My Soul is a gentler country-gospel number that’s exactly the kind of thing one can imagine Tom and Elvis singing together after-hours in Las Vegas, full of striking images like “the years flew by like a mighty rush of eagles”.

The mood is altogether dustier on Did Trouble Me, which blows in on a wheeze of harmonium and plaintive banjo, with a ghostly hum of backing vocals oozing into the last verse, as Jones exults how his Lord is going “to make me human, to make me whole”. Elsewhere, the standard warning to errant sinners, Run On, is treated to a John Lee Hooker/ Canned Heat boogie itch, while Hooker’s own Burning Hell provides Jones with his most impressive vocal showcase, those 70-year-old pipes bursting with passion as he affirms his refusal to make any deal with the Devil.

Overall, it’s an extraordinary achievement: Praise & Blame represents the kind of reconnection with his core creative fire that was hinted on a few tracks of his last album, 24 Hours, but is here left naked and bleeding raw, bereft of showbiz blandishments.

Photo: Dave Hogan/Getty Images for Guinness

For the nice feature story from Sunday’s Welsh paper and the nincompoop’s review, click here to (more…)

Sir Tom will be on TV with Andrew Marr on Sunday, July 25, 9:00 on BBC One. Tune in. Hopefully, TJI will have the show posted.

On Thursday, July 22, Tom was interviewed by John Wilson on the BBC Radio 4 show, From the Front Row. A short video is below.

You can hear the interview in the TJI.com Video Library.

For a most interesting print and audio review,, a long, new interview from Wales click here to (more…)

Today it’s a statement from Tom’s people about the alleged TJ quote saying P&B is a Johnny Cash recording. Oddly, they refer to Tom as, simply, “Tom.” Anyway, TJI was happy to see this as, a few weeks ago, the Cash comparison was discussed and, by TJI and several commentators, was rejected. Next up is a review from Entertainment Weekly. Don’t know why a person (meaning I) should expect more of EW, but I do. It is silly. And, finally, WXRT in Chicago talks about how it’s a “bummer” that TJ and The Killers won’t be working together. She includes a statement on the topic from Tom’s management. She’s correct. It is a bummer.

If you haven’t already done so, be sure to check out the new-ish TJI flickr set Sir Tom Jones Plays Festivals.

Please note that, like many other writers/editors/English teachers, I cannot help correcting grammar/spelling/usage errors in posts from other sources. Sorry if it bothers you but I really cannot help doing it.

Also, I’ve been getting lots of emails with suggested material to post on this site. The sources seem to be news alerts, other websites and/or facebook. Please believe I am very grateful for your help but, lately, especially with such long posts on TJI, many of you are sending things that have already been posted here. Please, take a few minutes to read an entire post so it will save you the work of sending the item and save me from having to thank you — because I honestly do appreciate you taking the time to send something — but, at the same time, tell you that it’s already been posted. Sometimes that is embarrassing. So, please! keep sending, but please check first.

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“It’s been widely reported that Tom has called Praise & Blame his ‘Johnny Cash recording. We are not sure where this came from, but these words are not Tom’s.

“With all due respect to the late great Johnny Cash, there was no design or intention to re-formulate the Rick Rubin ‘design’ of the American recordings. Research into the vast repertoire of the ’spiritual’ repertoire was extensive, with inspiration drawn from the hundreds of recordings by dozens of great artists worldwide.

“There was no preconceived way to approach the songs that eventually made the final cut of the album. The songs were worked as a band works, with Tom, Ethan, Jeremy and Dave playing live in the studio, in one room together, with the engineer in the same room. What you hear is what happened, in full takes, as the band and Tom worked through each song.

“It so happens that Ain’t No Grave, which was recorded for Praise & Blame late last year, was not only included in the last Cash album, but was also the title…this was entirely coincidental. Tom’s version of Run On, which Cash also recorded, was inspired much more by Elvis Presley’s version, which Tom and Elvis would often sing as part of the many gospel singalongs that happened when they met after shows.

“To take nothing away from either artist, there is little to compare, musically, between the two in their approach to this repertoire, which we hope you can hear if you give it a careful listen.”

From Entertainment Weekly: Praise & Blame (2010) Tom Jones (Musician)

Reviewed by Tom Sinclair | Jul 21, 2010 | Entertainment Weekly | Tom Sinclair is a senior writer for EW and has been called “the handsomest man in rock criticism” (by his wife)

Details Release Date: Jul 27, 2010; Lead Performance: Tom Jones (Musician); Genres: Blues, Gospel | Tom Jones (Musician)

People scoffed when Tom Jones showed up in Martin Scorsese’s PBS documentary series The Blues alongside the likes of Eric 
Clapton. But Mr. ‘What’s New, Pussycat?’ has an unmistakable flair for black vernacular music. On Praise & Blame, the singer revels in gutbucket and gospel, delivering 12 emotionally charged sermon-songs with raw-throated abandon. Who knows? He might yet get some respect from blooze purists. B+

For the other articles, click here to (more…)

From a Latitude Festival rundown, posted onBeehivecity.com is the strange bit by Amy West but I guess it proves the old saw, “All’s well that ends well.”

Tom Jones kicked started Sunday’s schedule with a secret set to a half-empty stage. He was typically cheeky but borderline creepy when banging on about his sexy young backing singers being sisters. He then waved to his son off-stage, saying they’re often mistaken for brothers because he was only 16 when conceived, then adding “that ’s Wales for you”. Singing only from his new album out next Monday, Tom received a mixed reception and replied “yeah later” on hearing “Sex Bomb” repeatedly yelled at him. Although I knew none of the songs, I was moved to tears by the sincerity in his deep rich vibrato. Johnny Cash fans eat your heart out.

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From DrownedinSound.com, is a new interview below. (Charles Bukowski, mentioned several times, was an American writer who lived in LA. Time called him the “laureate of American lowlife.” He wrote a poem called Who In the Hell Is Tom Jones? You can google it but it’s rather unpleasant.

By Kevin Perry/July 20, 2010, drownedinsound.com

‘Who in the hell is Tom Jones?’ spat Charles Bukowski. It’s a good question. The Tom Jones he wrote about in Hollywood is a slick Vegas showman, “his shirt is open and the black hairs on his chest show. The hairs are sweating.” The Tom Jones I meet is a white-haired Welshman about to release an album of blues and gospel so out of character that the vice-president of his own record label called it a “sick joke”. So just who in the hell does Tom Jones think he is?

He was billed alongside The Beatles and The Stones, partied with Elvis and Sinatra and dueted with everyone from Janis Joplin to Ray Charles, but in the popular imagination he’s festooned with knickers, his career built on sex appeal. Now, on Praise & Blame, he’s traded sex for death. There is a lot of mortality on Praise & Blame, and a lot of God. What’s happening here, Mr Jones? He looks at me and turns his palms towards me. “Time’s getting shorter,” he says.

“Now that I’m seventy, I know I haven’t got as much time left as I did when I was thirty, or forty, or fifty, or sixty. I still want to record as much as I can, but when you don’t have that much time left you think about it more.” Age has given him a sense of urgency, I suggest. “Exactly! You think, let’s knuckle down and let’s do some stuff that I want to do.”

It turns out that what Tom Jones wants to do is cover Bob Dylan and John Lee Hooker and a host of standards drawn from the deep well of the American South. “I’d heard a lot of them before, from different artists. I knew them. Run On, I knew the Elvis Presley version. We tried it in the same key as he did it in, but I sounded too much like him. I’m not going to play it if we’re not doing anything differently, so we put it in a higher key.”

For the rest of this interview, the NY Daily News review, clips from every track on P & B and a word on the alleged collaboration with The Killers, click here to (more…)