For male singing stars, hosting a TV variety program was tantamount to castration. Many a promising musical career was left dickless after the humiliation of an artist being forced to participate in lousy comedy skits with Paul Lynde week after week. Jones wisely left the demeaning world of comedy to whatever standup comedian or Muppet was a guest that week, and stuck to belting out song after song.
"If I ever get the chance to do a network show again, I'd do all music," he says. "And do a different kind of music every week. When I did the TV shows for ABC, they tried to make me more middle of the road and get more established acts for ratings. I used to do a tradeoff. I'd say, 'If you want Barbara Eden of I Dream of Jeannie on, fine, but I want Wilson Pickett or Jerry Lee Lewis."
Besides smuggling great British rock bands like The Who ("They appeared three or four times," says Jones), the Bee Gees, the Dave Clark Five and the Crazy World of Arthur Brown into American living rooms, Jones gave his viewing audience a 15-minute teaser of the pandemonium he was capable of whipping up in his SRO concerts at the end of every telecast.
Each week, this explosive segment opened with the same extreme close-up of a Shure microphone perched atop its stand. Waiting. Waiting. Waiting for Tom's love touch. A slow drumroll commenced, soon punctuated by the mounting swells of the Jack Parnell Orchestra. Then, descending upon the delicate curvature of that blasted mike we'd been staring at for what now seemed like an eternity, came Jones' bejeweled fingers (except for that extended pinky, pointing ever northward).
Jones always performed on the air with three gargantuan letters behind him--TOM, just in case you'd forgotten with what force you were dealing. When Engelbert Humperdinck got his own copycat ABC-TV show in 1970, his concert segment had to be jettisoned because he couldn't rock, couldn't scream, couldn't swivel, and when he wasn't appearing in lame skits, he was singing schmaltz like "Quando Quando Quando." No Joe Tex covers for Humperdinck, no sirree. Clearly, he was the Anti-Tom. (And besides, the bill for gargantuan letters spelling ENGELBERT most likely proved too high.)
Jones is a little more generous in his assessment. "The only thing that ever bothered me was when people compared Humperdinck and myself. I couldn't see it. He's a balladeer. I feel I'm more of an R&B singer. I inflect that in my songs. Humperdinck can't. He doesn't have it in him to do that."
Jones was a friend of Humpy back in the days when Engelbert was plain, old Gerry Dorsey. Jones recorded "Release Me" first, but ironically didn't want to release it, and even coached Humperdinck on the phrasing for the tune at Mills' request. In the coming years, the press would drum up stories of a huge rivalry between the two men for Mills' attention, but it was never a problem for Jones.
"'Release Me' became a huge hit, even preventing the Beatles' 'Penny Lane' from going to No. 1 in England," says Jones. "Then he started believing his own publicity and saying to Gordon that he wasn't giving him enough time. So he put it in the papers that Gordon Mills no longer represents me. That's when the split came."
Both men are currently on the road, but since the 200-plus dates Jones plays each year include rock clubs, his audiences are top-heavy with young people. "It fluctuates nightly," he notes. Which fans are tougher to control? "A lot of those full-grown women can get ... (Jones laughs) I mean, I can elbow a 17-year-old out of the way.
"The older fans want to sit down, but the kids want to get up. So you get that bit of conflict. I played a show in my hometown of Cardiff and these young fellows love the old stuff as well--they go nuts for 'Delilah'--and they were leaping up and down when this old woman apparently started smacking one kid in the back, telling him to sit down. He turned around and said to this woman, 'Fuck off, grandma!' I was pissing myself, but this sort of thing goes on."
Jones is thankful that the toss-hotel-keys-onstage trend is dying out among his female fans. "That was cute while it was happening. Then they started with the undergarments. The underwear still flies. I used to do the business with them and wipe my brow. But the music suffered for it. Too much tongue-in-cheek. People didn't think I was serious about my music, that I was fooling around too much. Me, I thought, you can have a bit of fun and also get serious. But you can't regulate it if you're doing 'Walking in Memphis' and somebody hits you with a pair of drawers. It kills the mood!"
Jones chuckles. "If only I could have an applause sign that flashes 'KNICKER-THROWING NOW!'"
Tom Jones is scheduled to perform on Friday, March 8, at Celebrity Theatre. Showtime is 8 p.m.
