Hollywood Studio Magazine (June 1971)

Singer...Entertainer.. .Sex Symbol fYou know him as Tom Jones, singer, entertainer and ebullient sex-symbol, perhaps. Truth to tell, he’s all those things. Born Thomas Jones Woodward, June 7, 1940, he spent his early youth in his hometown of Treforrest, Glamorgan, Wales, where it was only natural that he should follow in the footsteps of his father and become a coal miner. However, at the age of six, he had a go at “show business” by borrowing an empty orange crate from the neighborhood grocer, coverting it into an imaginery stage and thus earned his first taste of applause as a street singer. It must have been heady stuff, that applause. He seems never to have quite got the sound of it out of his head. He never did become a coal-miner, but he did become a glove-cutter in a leather factory, among other daytime jobs so he could sing in neighborhood pubs at night. Meanwhile, Tom Woodward was being strongly influenced by several American singers, notably Jerry Lee Lewis and the late Sam Cooke, and evolving a style of his own mingled with “soul” from the other side of the Atlantic. In 1963, after joining a group called The Senators, he was doing his thing in the Pontypridd Working Man’s Club when a former singer and fellow Welshman named Gordon Mills heard him. Mills, who had been with a group called The Viscounts, had only recently decided to give up singing and specialize in management and writing. Tom struck him as the kind of talent he was looking for, and thus began a relationship which has spelled big profits for both of them. It was Mills who tried to persuade Tom and the group to go to London, but Tom didn’t feel he could risk a sure thing for a gamble, especially since it was unlikely that he could earn enough money to support himself in London and his wife, Linda, and their son, Mark, in Wales. But Mills finally won out. Renaming the group “Tom and the Squires,” six weeks later they all left for London in search of fame and fortune. It didn’t come easily. Linda and Mark stayed in Wales, living on money Mills managed to borrow for Tom and which he in turn sent home to his wife. Then they signed a record contract - and hopes soared. But the record was a flop - Tom Jones’ only flop to date, as it turned out. However, under a new recording contract, Tom Jones (he had dropped the Woodward) recorded a song co-written by Gordon Mills “It’s Not Unusual”. The rest is history. It zoomed to No.l in 13 countries and sold 3,000,000 records. 1964 and the Age of Tom Jones had dawned. Since that time, success has compounded for the singing star and his manager. Jones’ records have sold in the tens of millions. As a performer, Tom Jones is a sellout wherever he goes — in concert or nightclubs. Named Entertainer of the Year by the Friars Club, Tom Jones has also conquered television, to nobody’s surprise. He became the first entertainer in history to star in a show which was produced half in England, half in the U. S. intended initially for showing in both countries. His 1971 season included a series of eight television specials on ABC-TV. Today, Tom, Linda and their son Mark live in a three-story mansion in Surrey, surrounded by rolling green hills, a long way from the tin-roofed shack in Pontypridd, where he had once listened, late into the night, to the American records of popular song-stylists. * * * 7