Oldies Music

“People always see me as the larger-than-life showman, laughing on The Voice, but no one knows my mother had to sell our little terraced house in Pontypridd, Wales… just so I could afford to keep singing.”…In a deeply emotional, two-hour retrospective interview on the BBC, Sir Tom Jones, the usually boisterous legend, broke down for the first time. Tears welled up in his eyes as he opened up about the gritty reality of his early days — the years his family lived paycheck to paycheck in the valleys, the nights he sang in smoky working men’s clubs for pennies, and the painful reality of being rejected by London executives who said he was “too aggressive” and “too rough” to be a star.

Introduction Tom spoke through a trembling voice, his Welsh accent thick with emotion: “There were...