Wednesday, July 07, 2010

Praise and Blame

I was intrigued to hear a story on radio news that Tom Jones had been criticised by the v-p of Island Record for making an album of "hymns" which he labelled a "sick joke". Now the discussion is whether the 'leaked' email was, in fact, all part of the pre-release hype.

Having seen a few clips on the profile of Tom Jones on last night's Imagine, it seems remarkably uninformed criticism. This album isn't Harry Secombe territory; it's John Lee Hooker's "Burning Hell" and Bob Dylan's "What good am I?". In many ways, it looks like a return to the gospel and blues roots that Tom was so good at delivering in his early days, before he got sucked into pop songs, US TV variety shows and the whole Vegas thing.

Just wish he'd kept with the blues in the first place!

3 comments:

Steve Tilley said...

I think I might be the only person in the world who doesn't really rate Tom Jones' voice.

Rich-in-bootle said...

Island records? the label of marley and u2? they wrote a few songs about God didn't they?!

tom jones has a decent voice, but his little brother kelly is much better

Mike Peatman said...

@St You could be. I don't like most of his stuff, but the early footage of him singing real blues hints at what might have been

@Rich My thoughts entirely.