Tom Jones on Praise and Blame — and a Life Well-Sung
TOM JONES — PRAISE & BLAME
July 20, 2010 — “Tom Jones, the hip-thrusting, turbo-tonsilled lothario from the Welsh Valleys, is going through the umpteenth makeover of his 50-year singing career,” reports Andrew Perry in The Daily Telegraph (UK).
“Jones’s latest album,
entitled Praise & Blame, is
a sparsely-accompanied,
back-to-basics collection,
in the gospel idiom of the
American South. Some songs are sombre, contemplative, country-tinged; others are fiery, rollicking, blues-drenched; all are spiritually profound, commensurate with Jones’s advanced stage in life, and all, at long last, put his boundlessly capable tenor voice to good use.
“‘Late at night, in Las Vegas, I’d sing gospel with
Elvis Presley’, says Jones. ‘After our shows, we’d go back up to the suite and sing’.”
“He was surprised that I knew some of these songs. I told him, ‘Well, a lot of gospel songs are taken from British hymns.” He thought gospel was from the South, from black people singing in church, and it rubbed off on white Southerners – but it was the two peoples coming together, as far as I’m concerned. The whites were singing country and hymns, and the black people added to it and put their own thing in it, and that’s when you get the hot Southern gospel.”
“And that’s where rock and roll, to me, came from. The structure of the music was gospel; they just changed the words and boogied it up.” Continue reading…
Tom Jones’ Praise & Blame is available
from Amazon.com.
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