• June 7, 1940
• Tom Jones was born Thomas Jones Woodward in the village of Treforest, near Pontypridd in Wales.
• At 12, Tom was diagnosed with tuberculosis, and had to spend the next two years in bed recovering. He described it as the worst time of his life.
• He married his high school sweetheart, Linda Trenchard, in March 1957, when they were both 16 and expecting a child together. They remained married for 59 years, until her death in 2016.
• He began his career singing in working men's clubs, as the frontmen of Welsh beat group Tommy Scott and the Senators.
• Woodward was discovered by manager Gordon Mills, who took the young singer to London and changed his moniker to Tom Jones to cash in on the popularity of the sexy 1963 British comedy adventure film of the same name.
• Mills began promoting his protégé to record companies, eventually getting Jones a recording contract with Decca. His first single, "Chills and Fever", was released in August 1964. It did not chart, but the follow up, "It's Not Unusual," became a huge hit reaching #1 in the UK in early 1965 and making the top 10 in America.
• Elvis Presley was Jones' idol and they met for the first time in 1965 at the Paramount film studio when Elvis was filming Paradise, Hawaiian Style. They formed a firm friendship that endured until the death of "the King" in 1977.
• In 1966, Tom Jones won a Grammy Awards for Best New Artist.
• Tom Jones' UK variety show This Is Tom Jones premiered on ABC-TV in February 1969 after the network paid out over $20 million for the rights. The series ran for two years totalling 65 episodes.
• A then unknown Elton John (then known as Reg Dwight) sang backing vocals on Jones' single "Daughter Of Darkness" in 1970.
• Tom Jones appeared as himself in an episode of The Simpsons in 1992.
• He was knighted by Queen Elizabeth II at Buckingham Palace on March 29, 2006 for services to music.
• Sir Tom Jones' collection Surrounded by Time topped the UK albums chart on May 2, 2021. At 80 years and 10 months old, the veteran Welsh baritone became the oldest male to reach #1 on the tally. He took the accolade from Bob Dylan, who reached the summit at 79 years and one month in June 2020 with Rough And Rowdy Ways.
  
  The oldest female to top the albums chart, Dame Vera Lynn, claimed the #1 spot with her greatest hits collection We'll Meet Again - The Very Best Of Vera Lynn in 2009 when she was 92.
• Tom Jones regularly sang as a teenager at family gatherings, weddings and in his school choir. In 1957, he performed his first paid gig. "I used to go to the Wood Road Non-Political club in Treforest," he recalled to the Radio Times. "One night a performer didn't turn up so the chairman said, 'Tommy, do you still have your guitar?' I ran home, got the guitar, and sang six songs - Elvis numbers, Little Richard, Fats Domino. Rock and roll had just kicked in."
  
  "Although I didn't sound like Elvis, I saw what he'd done on TV, standing with his legs apart and playing the hell out of his guitar and I was doing that," Jones continued. "I don't think the miners had seen anyone just singing rock and roll with a guitar round their neck like that. In the end it did make an impression Because I got invited back, and I got paid one pound. I bought a lot of beer with that!"

Comments: 1

• Dolores Coyle from IrelandSaw Tom on the 12th of August in Belfast he is a living legend.

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