Artist research - Tom Jones

Tom Jones was born in the small mining village of Trefforest, Pontypridd near Cardiff in Wales on the 7th June 1940. He was born with the name Thomas John Woodward but later decided to use the stage name Jones due to his mothers maiden name and his Welsh nationality.


Tom Jones is a singer but has also been involved in television when he had 2 variety shows. His first was called "This is Tom Jones" which was on air from 1969 until 1971 on ITV in the UK and on ABC in America. His second variety show lasted for a series of 24 episodes which was called "The Tom Jones show". As a singer, Tom Jones has recorded and released songs from a wide range of genres including pop, rock, R&B, show tunes, country, dance, and techno which has sold over 100 million records.

Tom Jones started off his singing career in the 1960's when he was the front man of the Welsh beat group "Tommy Scott and the Senators". The group was introduced to manager Phil Soloman when they were spotted performing one night locally in Wales but the partnership was unfortunatly short lived. The group continued singing locally in pubs and gentlemens clubs when Tom Jones was spotted one night by Gordon Mills, a London manager.



Many record companies found Jones' stage presence, act, and vocal delivery too raucous and raunchy. Eventually, Mills got Jones a recording contract with Decca. His first single was "Chills and Fever" which was released in 1964. It didn't chart, but the follow-up, "It's Not Unusual", which Gordon Mills wrote, became an international hit. It reached number one in the UK and the top ten in the USA even though the BBC refused to show it and it had to be promoted by a pirate radio station.

In mid 1960s Gordon Mills got Jones a number of film theme tunes such as "Whats new pussy cat?" and "Thunderball" which he recorded. He was then awarded the Grammy Award for Best New Artist in 1965.

Tom Jones moved to Las Vegas where he started to perform at the Flamingo. This was the start of Jones' recognisable and famous charasmatic performances where the reponses from the crowd were a knicker hurling frenzy. His time in Las Vegas resulted in his meeting of his idol Elvis Presley who he became closer and closer to until his unfortunate death in 1977.

In the 1970s Jones' popularity within his music started to decline and his hits were not reaching chart levels. His friend and manager Gordon Mills sadly died from cancer in 1986 and this led to his son Mark to become his new manager. He saw an oppertunity for his father to regain popularity by changing his genre of music to something more modern and this resulted in hits such as "A Boy From Nowhere" and "If I Only Knew".

Tom Jones carried on recording and performing hits into the 21st century when he was awarded a BRIT for best male in 2000 and then another BRIT award in 2003 for his outstanding contribution to music.



The singer was awarded an OBE in 1999 which was then followed by a knighting from the Queen in 2006 for his services to music.








Tom Jones is still blooming in his music career as he performed at the Glastonbury fesitval last year in 2009 and has just announced he will be releasing a new album called "Praise and Blame" on 26th July 2010.



http://www.tomjones.com - this is the offical Tom Jones website where people can look at tour dates, news, photos and buy Tom Jones merchandise.

http://www.myspace.com/tomjones - this is Tom Jones offical MySpace page with all the latest news, videos and interviews.

http://www.youtube.com/user/OfficialTomJones - this is the official youtube channel for Tom Jones where there are videos of him in the studio and documenting the making of his new album.


This is my favourite song by Tom Jones "Delilah". I like this song because it tells a story and the music to go with the song creates tension. I have been brought up listening to Tom Jones music and this has been one of my favourite songs from a young age: