Oh, I wanna die

Continuing my trip back through the 1965 album charts.

20/06/65 : Along Came Jones - Tom Jones


Our sixth visit with Mr Jones and he's actually been pretty impressive over the years from '68 all the way up to '21, so that makes this our earliest visit so far - I think we can all imagine what it's going to sound like, so I'd better listen to it Caerphilly (Welsh cheese - get it?!?).

Ah, this is the album with "It's Not Unusual" on - one of the songs he's still best known for and it's nearly 60 years old now. The first side of the album is pretty much in this up-tempo style, including a BIZARRE jazzed up version of "The Skye Boat Song". The second side is more down-tempo, featuring croony ballads which are well done, but not so much fun for me - although I did like his version of "Spanish Harlem". But I don't think anyone will be surprised to hear Tom's got a great voice thoughout and he's giving it his all here, so I don't think you can't ask for more than that - it's all of its time, but enjoyably so. I'm intrigued as to what they were thinking with the shadow/thing on the album cover though. 

We're at #14 in the charts this week on his fourth week of a five week run, with it having peaked at #11 in its third week. The top five this week were TSOM, Bob Dylan, Mary Poppins, Burt Bacharach and The Beatles and there were two new entries for Andy Williams (#13) and Buddy Holly (#20). 

Wikipedia tells us this is his debut album (he's up to 39 now) - and, to be honest, that's pretty much it really. Padding things out a bit, I checked out the entry for "It's Not Unusual" and learned it was written by Les Reed, who was Tom's manager and was first recorded by Tom (who was unknown at the time) with the intention of it being a demo for Sandie Shaw, but she liked what he did so much that she said he should run with it. Several sessions were used with various musicians to get the right sound and no-one knows exactly which version was used, but it may or may not feature one of or both of Jimmy Page and Elton John as session musicians

"Customers also listened to" Cilla Black, Engelbert Humperdinck, Nancy Sinatra and Mousse T - I imagine Mousse fan's checking out other Tom stuff are somewhat surprised by what they find. Or maybe not, because I imagine there's not too many corners of the globe that haven't been regaled by Tom's stories of the 60s - and it's a bit mad that this is where it all started.

13/06/65 - Not Bob's worst album
27/06/65 - Nope

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