The Welshman tackles some well-known blues and rock numbers on his latest. Paddy Kehoe is unimpressed
Back in 2005, Tom Jones and Van Morrison took part in a Mike Figgis documentary on the British blues scene entitled Red, White and Blues. Sadly both men just didn’t convince. Tom, a decent man, yes, has the voice, sure - and so has Van - but there was something bland, smug and not quite right about both gentlemen singing the blues.
The blues is not really a coat you can take on and off at will. You can’t really have it both ways - be well-fed and prosperous, sell out arenas and have your gigs turn into cosy family occasions. And then have the audacity to pretend to get the genuine grit and down-troddeness of the blues into your schtick. Van, in fairness, has certainly covered Sonny Boy Wiliamson convincingly - check out Good Morning Little Schoolgirl on the Back on Top album - but Tom's voice is too much of a well-tuned Porsche to do really any kind of rootsy thing.
Yes, sure, the various band set-ups here are good, passable slide player etc, rocking out on things like Los Lobos’ Everybody Loves a Train or the Floyd/Isbell composition, Till My Back Ain’t Got No Bone. Sligo Old Timey outfit Rackhouse Pilfer play on two country-tinged tracks, a version of Milk Carton Kids‘ Honey, Honey - Imelda May helps out on vocals - and The Rolling Stones’ Factory Girl. But when it comes down to it, whose version would you prefer to hear of the opener, Opportunity to Cry? The man who wrote it, Willie Nelson or Tom? I know my answer. Listeners may concur when it comes to Gillian Welch’s Elvis Presley Blues and Dave Van Ronk’s He Was a Friend Of Mine.
So Tom comes along with that great unmodulated bear of a voice of his that instantly indicates `Tom Jones’ to essay the Rolling Stones’ Factory Girl. But he actually sounds like he is straining the voice, as if he had picked too high a key. The Welshman has tried to reinvent himself before. One recalls his 1991 Carrying a Torch album back in the early nineties, made with the aforementioned Van, a record which included a bizarrely unsuitable cover of The Waterboys’ Strange Boat. Ultimately, Carrying a Torch never took fire at all.
The new album is released as the companion soundtrack album to Tom’s new autobiography, Over The Top And Back which is also published today. It’s certainly passable enough, and the versions of Lonnie Johnson’s Tomorrow Night and Jesse Fuller’s Raise a Ruckus do the songs justice. But I’m mired in the nostalgia trap lurking in The Green, Green Grass of Home, where it’s not unusual to want to hear Tom Jones sing What’s New Pussycat.
Paddy Kehoe
