Tom rose to fame in the mid-1960s, with an exuberant live act which included wearing tight breeches and billowing shirts, in an Edwardian style popular amongst his peers at the time. Jones was awarded the Grammy Award for Best New Artist for 1965.
Following several hits in the UK, he moved to the US and appeared on The Ed Sullivan Show. He was known for his overt sexuality in the 1960s, before this was as common as it became in subsequent years. Women would swoon and scream, and in 1968, starting at New York’s Copacabana night club, some would throw their panties on stage. Soon after, he began to play Las Vegas, where he still plays today for 10 to 12 weeks each year. There, they started throwing hotel room keys.
His early hits include “It’s Not Unusual” (1965), “What’s New Pussycat?”, written by Burt Bacharach for Woody Allen’s What’s New, Pussycat? (1965) and “Thunderball”, the theme for the James Bond film (1965). Jones’s recording career slumped on the pop charts during the seventies and eighties, although he placed sixteen singles on the Billboard Country Music charts between 1976 and 1985, and his touring continued successfully. When his son Mark became his manager in 1987, a change of image followed, and he is now highly respected by other singers and, today, attracts new audiences of all ages.
His recording career was revived in 1987 with his first major hit single in over a decade, “A Boy From Nowhere'”, taken from the musical Matador. Following this, he started to record with a younger generation of musicians.
His Reload album, released in 2000, became the biggest hit of his career. An album of cover versions recorded as duets with contemporary artists, using their record producers, and utilising their recording methods, it reached number one in the United Kingdom, and sold over 5 million copies world-wide.
On March 29th 2006 Tom Jones was knighted by the Queen at Buckingham Palace under his real name Thomas Woodward.
For more information see: http://www.tomjones.com/
