Ladies and Gentlemen, This is Tom Jones

August 15, 2015 4:25 PM

Courtesy of Turkish YouTube user Burç Arda Gül, highlights from This is Tom Jones, a variety show that ran on ATV in the UK and ABC in the US from 1969-1971.
Raise Your Hand, with Janis Joplin
Delta Lady, with Joe Cocker
Medley, with Stevie Wonder
Any Place I Hang My Hat Is Home, with Tony Bennett
I Walk the Line, with Johnny and June Carter Cash
Hard to Handle, with some enthusiastic audience members.
posted by Horace Rumpole (29 comments total)

Previously: Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young and Jones.

The original link is broken now, but the uploader from this new post has saved us.
posted by howfar at 5:12 PM on August 15, 2015 [1 favorite]

My stepfather's comment about a Tom Jones USO show: "Not a dry seat in the house." He wasn't usually vulgar, so when he was, I believed him.
posted by Mr. Yuck at 5:19 PM on August 15, 2015 [7 favorites]

Whenever I see any clips from variety shows from the 1970s I always try to imagine the giant piles of cocaine they had backstage.
posted by bondcliff at 5:26 PM on August 15, 2015 [7 favorites]

That Janis Joplin duet is such a classic horror film. It is insanely awkward. Tom Jones just bopping desperately from side to side, Janis dressed like my Auntie at a wedding, dancing like my Auntie at an exorcism, everybody looking a bit like a member of another species compared to everyone else. Wow.

Ooooh, Tom Jones, though. Last year, Kirsty Young (the host of Desert Island Discs) made some of the thirstiest remarks I've ever heard a BBC presenter make about anybody -- about Tom Jones:

Sir Tom, 74, appeared on Desert Island Discs in 2010 and the 45-year-old revealed he was one of her “favourite customers” in a decade of fronting the programme.

She told the Radio Festival in Salford: “I was grateful that I was interviewing him in the autumn of his years, because God knows if he had walked into my studio 30 years ago I would not have been responsible for my actions.

“He pulsates sexuality. It is unfair. He has an animal magnetism and he is very at home with himself. I can only imagine he is a killer in the sack.”

Perhaps it is wrong to talk about strangers that way, but the thing is, I'll be the last person to disagree with that sentiment. I fucking love young Tom Jones. So thank you for this post.
posted by two or three cars parked under the stars at 5:26 PM on August 15, 2015 [7 favorites]

There was a kid in my neighborhood growing up (Wisconsin in the late 60's) who loved Tom Jones and the vampire show Dark Shadows. I'm sorry to say we teased him mercilessly. I've come to have a great affection for both of them. Jones appears to have a completely generous spirit to go with his prodigious talent. And Dark Shadows, well... it was freakin' awesome. Sorry John!
posted by cleroy at 5:48 PM on August 15, 2015 [4 favorites]

Tom Jones' gift is that he is game for anything.
posted by JanetLand at 6:33 PM on August 15, 2015 [5 favorites]

With Jerry Lee Lewis.
With Little Richard.
posted by (Arsenio) Hall and (Warren) Oates at 6:47 PM on August 15, 2015

The Tom Jones / Janis Joplin number just made my day! Wow so good to see that.
posted by rmmcclay at 7:04 PM on August 15, 2015

Pure fun.
posted by Mr. Yuck at 7:08 PM on August 15, 2015 [1 favorite]

My mother say Tom Jones as a lounge act in Vegas in the early 70s. Tom used her cocktail napkin to dab his chest sweat. She still has that napkin somewhere. That's how powerful Tom Jones' magnetism is.
posted by mmascolino at 7:31 PM on August 15, 2015 [2 favorites]

It's hard to imagine that Tom and Janis didn't hook up right after that.

I liked their duet enough. The background dancers? My eyes.
posted by Miko at 7:33 PM on August 15, 2015 [4 favorites]

I love Tom Jones whenever I bump into him like this. He is very, very sexy to this very day. His version of Talking Heads' "Burning Down the House" is terrific. And sexy.
posted by ThatCanadianGirl at 8:02 PM on August 15, 2015

Tom Jones does Black Betty.
posted by tommyD at 8:15 PM on August 15, 2015 [3 favorites]

Or for something completely different, The Tennessee Waltz with the Chieftains.
posted by tommyD at 8:18 PM on August 15, 2015

That Joplin clip must have been designed to demonstrate color television sets. Holy freaking chroma.
posted by JoeZydeco at 8:36 PM on August 15, 2015 [2 favorites]

Those tight, tight pants from the 70's didn't hide much.
posted by ashbury at 8:45 PM on August 15, 2015

The manliness level of the Jerry Lee duet is off the gauge. Jerry Lee sounds in great form.
posted by bonobothegreat at 8:53 PM on August 15, 2015

bondcliff: Whenever I see any clips from variety shows from the 1970s I always try to imagine the giant piles of cocaine they had backstage.
posted by bondcliff

Watching the CSNY clip? You don't imagine it - you feel it when any one of them look into the camera. Even if you've never actually done cocaine.
posted by mandolin conspiracy at 10:14 PM on August 15, 2015 [5 favorites]

Saw Tom Jones play in the late 90's. During a song break, he picked up a thong someone had thrown on stage and asked, "What is this, an eye patch?" Then proceeded to put it on his head, covering one eye, and announced, "Arh, I'm a pirate!"

Between that and starting the show with the PA playing The Ballad of Tom Jones, I've always thought he was way cooler than I could ever imagine.
posted by thecjm at 10:48 PM on August 15, 2015 [3 favorites]

I have never taken cocaine, but OMG, I looked at that CSNY clip and I could FEEL it and I am never ever doing any drugs!
posted by maupuia at 10:55 PM on August 15, 2015

I remember this show on Australian ABC. After an Elvis medley, Tom looked into the camera and said, "You watching?"
posted by emf at 11:51 PM on August 15, 2015

I wasn't a huge fan of Jones or his shtick, but his weekly featuring of his guitar player, Big Jim Sullivan (ace Brit session wiz, Jimmy Page's mentor, etc.) was must-see tv for me. Bittersweet lessons, as it were - how you're never going to able to play the guitar a hundredth as good, but, so what?
posted by Chitownfats at 11:52 PM on August 15, 2015

My personal Tom Jones cover fave: 'Mama Told Me Not to Come' with Stereophonics.
posted by chris24 at 5:40 AM on August 16, 2015

His version of "Baby It's Cold Outside" with Cerys Matthews is the very definition of sexy and playful!
posted by Quasimike at 2:53 PM on August 16, 2015

My fave Tom Jones clip is a rousing old b&w TV version of "I Got A Woman". I don't see it on YT.
posted by ovvl at 6:26 PM on August 16, 2015

Oh man, those clips are painful. My mother tells me I watched that show religiously as a toddler and was apparently in the panty-throwing contingent at that age (though fortunately only in the metaphorical sense). We saw Jones last year in Austin and he's still got it going on musically--not to mention with the panty-throwing crowd.
posted by immlass at 6:51 PM on August 16, 2015

That's amazing that CSN&Y are as high as they are in that performance and still in harmony and no missed notes, I mean, damn, they're so obviously fucked up.

My guardian/aunt, who became a Fundy Christian at about age 28 in the mid-'70s - and who never found white guys very attractive - would stop in her tracks with a gleam in her eye if she saw Tom Jones... or David Lee Roth (!?!?!?) pop up on our TV screen. Neither of them do anything for me. Jones is an excellent pop singer, though, and really just throws himself into whatever he's doing, I'll give him that.

Maybe the "sex god" thing is one of those experiences one has to have in person.
posted by droplet at 7:16 PM on August 16, 2015

Tom Jones in Mars Attacks
posted by kirkaracha at 8:50 AM on August 17, 2015

Tom Jones was born in 1940 so he was only 28-29 when he had that show. The calibre of people he performed with... Damn, he's the man.
posted by drinkmaildave at 6:04 PM on August 19, 2015