Issue #161 – Tom Jones
Las Vegas. Hairy chest. ‘Sexbomb’. We all know about that stuff, but what is it that made TOM JONES such a sensation in the first place?
HUW THOMAS tells the story of how the Teddy Boy from Pontypridd brought maximum R&B to South Wales, 304 Holloway Road and beyond, with contributions from his former bandmates in The Squires
Jones’ first EP On Stage is all the proof anyone should need that he was no Proby wannabe. It was a showcase for The Squires – settled on a line-up of Hopkins, guitarists Mickey Gee and Dave Cooper and drummer Chris Slade. “The band was shit hot,” Hopkins enthuses. “We were a unit, like The Rolling Stones, like The Beatles. We were doing harmonies and all that business.” The EP contains four bursts of relentless, razor-sharp R&B; Jones and The Squires would only have had competition if Mitch Ryder had been born a Welshman. Jones attempts to out-Richard Little Richard with explosive takes on ‘Bama Lama Bama Loo’ and ‘Lucille’ before slowing right down for Ray Charles’ ‘I Can’t Stop Loving You’. Sixty years on, the lines between his act and James Brown’s look very hazy indeed. The only original number on On Stage is ‘Little By Little’, which appears to be ‘Hi-Heel Sneakers’ with the names and dates muddled to earn Gordon Mills a writing credit, and it’s the most frantic rocker of the lot. Jones was thrilled about the EP release, telling NME it would “give people the chance to hear me as I really am”. “There’s a twist to that,” Vernon Hopkins points out today. “The only thing that was live was us. The cover shows Tom on stage with the audience screaming at him but that was all added. They were going for bloody gold doing that.”
On Stage was the last time The Squires’ sound would be heard on record. “I’d like to use them all the time but with shows like Top Of The Pops, it would be too complicated to get them with the regular band,” Jones contended to Disc And Music Echo in 1967. “People seem to think they’re dead or non-existent, but they still back me on almost all my bookings.” The Squires weren’t invited to play on Jones’ debut album Along Came Jones, but it is nevertheless a bombastic, go-go stomping affair. Right from the opener ‘I’ve Got A Heart’, Jones sounds desperate. Hungry. His singing reeks of torture, of a self-immolation absent from pop music since poor old Johnnie Ray. He sings ‘It Takes A Worried Man’ as if reliving five years of toil in Welsh ballrooms. All kinds of songs are wrestled to the ground this way, from beat boom perennials like ‘Memphis, Tennessee’ to a Motown-flavoured rejigging of ‘The Skye Boat Song’. There’s nothing Vegas about any of it; Jones is hip-thrusting between extremes again. A vocalist who can nail ‘Autumn Leaves’ and Don Gardner and Dee Dee Ford’s ‘I Need Your Lovin’’ on the same album? Unusual indeed.
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