Sean Smith - Tom Jones - The Life

Contents Cover Title Page Copyright Also by Sean Smith Dedication Part One: Tommy Woodward 1 The Show-Off 2 The Prisoner of Laura Street 3 A Teenager in Love 4 The Making of a Man 5 The Girl with the Red Dress On 6 Senator Tom 7 The Green Fly Boys Part Two: Tom Jones 8 The Black Hole 9 It’s Not Unusual 10 Pussycat 11 Green, Green Grass 12 A Love Supreme 13 This Is Tom Jones 14 On Top of Miss World 15 The King and I 16 The Slump Part Three: Sir Tom 17 Kiss-Off 18 You Can Leave Your Hat On 19 My Best Friend’s Funeral 20 Reloading 21 In Search of Credibility 22 The Road 23 The Voice Last Thoughts Tom’s Stars Acknowledgements Select Bibliography List of Searchable Terms Picture Section About the Publisher

HarperCollins Publishers

1 London Bridge Street

London SE1 9GF

www.harpercollins.co.uk

First published by HarperCollins Publishers 2015

FIRST EDITION

© Sean Smith 2015

Cover layout design © HarperCollins Publishers 2015

Cover photographs © johnwrightphoto.com

Sean Smith asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.

Find out about HarperCollins and the environment at

www.harpercollins.co.uk/green

Source ISBN: 9780008104450

Ebook Edition © March 2015 ISBN: 9780008104528

Version: 2015-07-10

Kylie

Gary

Alesha

Tulisa

Kate

Robbie

Cheryl

Victoria

Justin: The Biography

Britney: The Biography

J. K. Rowling: A Biography

Jennifer: The Unauthorized Biography

Royal Racing

The Union Game

Sophie’s Kiss (with Garth Gibbs)

Stone Me! (with Dale Lawrence)

To HB

Cover

Title Page Contents Cover Title Page Copyright Also by Sean Smith Dedication Part One: Tommy Woodward 1 The Show-Off 2 The Prisoner of Laura Street 3 A Teenager in Love 4 The Making of a Man 5 The Girl with the Red Dress On 6 Senator Tom 7 The Green Fly Boys Part Two: Tom Jones 8 The Black Hole 9 It’s Not Unusual 10 Pussycat 11 Green, Green Grass 12 A Love Supreme 13 This Is Tom Jones 14 On Top of Miss World 15 The King and I 16 The Slump Part Three: Sir Tom 17 Kiss-Off 18 You Can Leave Your Hat On 19 My Best Friend’s Funeral 20 Reloading 21 In Search of Credibility 22 The Road 23 The Voice Last Thoughts Tom’s Stars Acknowledgements Select Bibliography List of Searchable Terms Picture Section About the Publisher

Copyright

Also by Sean Smith

Dedication

Part One: Tommy Woodward

1 The Show-Off

2 The Prisoner of Laura Street

3 A Teenager in Love

4 The Making of a Man

5 The Girl with the Red Dress On

6 Senator Tom

7 The Green Fly Boys

Part Two: Tom Jones

8 The Black Hole

9 It’s Not Unusual

10 Pussycat

11 Green, Green Grass

12 A Love Supreme

13 This Is Tom Jones

14 On Top of Miss World

15 The King and I

16 The Slump

Part Three: Sir Tom

17 Kiss-Off

18 You Can Leave Your Hat On

19 My Best Friend’s Funeral

20 Reloading

21 In Search of Credibility

22 The Road

23 The Voice

Last Thoughts

Tom’s Stars

Acknowledgements

Select Bibliography

List of Searchable Terms

Picture Section

About the Publisher

Even as a small boy, it was always about the voice. Tom calls it his ‘God-given gift’. Freda Woodward believed her son was musical as a baby when she held him in her arms: ‘As soon as music came on the radio, he would start to move like a jelly. And if you left him in his cot, he would make musical sounds at the top of his voice. I remember thinking, “What’s eating this boy?”’

Tom’s first memory of impressing his mother was when he was a blond, curly-haired five-year-old and she heard him singing the popular wartime novelty song ‘Mairzy Doats’. She asked him to sing it again, and when he had finished, she told him, ‘You’ve got a lovely voice.’ That parental approval was all the encouragement Tom needed to believe that he would be a singer one day. ‘I had this voice and the love of it. So any chance I could get, I wanted to get up and sing.’

Tommy Woodward liked an audience as a little lad. His first cousins, Jean and the twins Ada and Margaret, would come over to his parents’ house on Laura Street for a concert. There would just be time to have a fight with Margaret, which Tommy usually started by trying to stick a spider down the back of her neck, before it was showtime. His doting mother Freda knew the routine, because he used to pester her almost daily to announce him dramatically, in a proper show business fashion.