What’s New, Tom Jones?

Tom Jones — singer, heartthrob, Mr. “What’s New Pussycat” — is back with a new gritty sound. He joins us.

Love him or hate him, no one who was around in the 1960s and 70s will forget the high-voltage stage act of singer and sex-symbol Tom Jones. Talk about a hunk of steamin’ junk! Tom Jones made Elvis look tame. The muscled-up, open shirt, tight pants son of a Welsh coal miner made the ladies swoon and throw their undies. It’s been a long road since then.  But Tom Jones never stopped singing or, finally, evolving. Now he’s singing stripped down blues. This hour On Point, Tom Jones, again.
-- Tom Ashbrook

Tom Jones, legendary music and entertainment superstar. Author of the new autobiography, "Over the Top And Back." His newest album, "Long Lost Suitcase," is out now. (@RealSirTomJones)

Los Angeles Times: It's not unusual: Tom Jones in top form on new album and autobiography — "At 75, Jones is in high spirits precisely because he has returned to making music the way he did when he was first exploring a sound that became known to millions  through such grand-scale pop hits as 'It’s Not Unusual,' 'What’s New Pussycat?' 'Delilah' and 'She’s a Lady.' His new album, 'Long Lost Suitcase,' was released last week in tandem with the autobiography. Featuring songs written by Gillian Welch, the Milk Carton Kids and Los Lobos, the collection is the third installment in Jones' career-redefining collaboration with English producer Ethan Johns."

NPR Music: Review: Tom Jones, 'Long Lost Suitcase' — "Tom Jones bills his newest album as a companion to his autobiography, Over The Top And Back. And were you to judge the facts of his life based exclusively on the Ethan Johns-produced, American-style roots music that makes up Long Lost Suitcase, you'd be hard-pressed to discover that the life lived was that of a 75-year-old from Wales who's ranked among the planet's most popular singers of standards and schlock, a heartthrob to a worldwide army of fans."

USA Today: Tom Jones, timeless sex symbol, is a family man — "In Jones' new autobiography, Over the Top and Back (Blue Rider Press), he refers briefly to this tradition, tracing his status as 'panty magnet' to one woman attending a 1969 concert. As the book's title suggests, the singer recounts some other excesses of his glory days, and of the leaner years and more modest venues that followed before his resurgence in recent decades. But the lasting image is that of Jones, now 75, as a family man who has been married to the same woman, the former Melinda Rose Trenchard, for 58 years."

https://www.scribd.com/doc/292805161/Excerpt-from-Over-the-Top-And-Back-by-Tom-Jones

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