Tom Jones - This Is Tom Jones, Volume 1 (1969)

This is the start a new six album series. I came across this music while putting together three Tom Jones BBC sessions albums. I learned that in 1969, Jones stopped performing for the BBC because he had a TV show on a rival British network. That show lasted until early 1971.

Jones is known for the power of his voice, not his vocal subtlety. That's true, but he could channel that power to sing songs in nearly every genre of music, which made him an ideal TV show host. For each episode, he would sing several songs, often of the big hits of the day, and one or more guest stars would sing some songs. But also for every episode, Jones would sing duets with the guests. This last aspect is particularly interesting to me. Popular music was peaking in the late 1960s and early 1970s, and many musical legends were in their prime, or at least still kicking: Johnny Cash, Stevie Wonder, Janis Joplin, Jerry Lee Lewis, Little Richard, Aretha Franklin, Wilson Pickett, Glen Campbell, Dusty Springfield, Joe Cocker, Ray Charles, Smokey Robinson, Burt Bacharach, the Supremes, Ella Fitzgerald, John Denver, and so on. Jones sang duets with ALL of them on his TV show, and many more! So even if you're not much of a Jones fan, this series is interesting for all of the star power of the many duets.

This first volume has fewer duets than most of the other volumes. But still, we have duets with Nancy Wilson, Sergio Mendes & the Brazil '66, Jerry Lee Lewis, Barbara Eden, and Mass Cass Elliott. (Barbara Eden was the genie in the "I Dream of Jeannie" TV show, but it turns out she was a very capable singer.) The Jerry Lee Lewis duet is a particular highlight in my opinion. Jones has stated that Lewis was one of his biggest musical influences, so it's not surprising that he and Lewis went off on a medley that lasted eight minutes. Plus, Lewis played his distinctive piano style on another song where he didn't sing.

None of the music in this series has been officially released. Well, unless you count DVD releases. I found about half of it from DVD sources, and the other half from YouTube videos. There are many more songs that I couldn't find, including even more intriguing duets. So if you have things I've missed, please let me know. The songs are roughly chronological by the order of the episodes. The DVD sourced songs have been sound quality, but even the YouTube ones sound pretty good. (I didn't include the rough sounding ones that I found.) 

However, one snag you'll find across this series is that sometimes there's audience cheering at the end, and sometimes not. Sometimes, it's only for a second or two and then quickly fades out. From the DVD sources, I found that this was often due to the fact that the pacing on the TV show was so fast that the show would be off to a commercial break or the next thing well before the audience clapping finished. I could have carefully patched in more clapping from other songs, but I'm not a big enough of a Tom Jones fan to do that. So please bear with that one flaw.

And speaking of flaws, since this isn't a proper BBC session kind of album, there isn't the problem of DJs talking over the music. I still had one "[Edit]" though, on the song "The Look of Love." That's because the YouTube video I used as the source had the first line of the song missing. Luckily, that verse was repeated later in the song, so I was able to patch that in.

This album is 49 minutes long.

01 Johnny B. Goode (Tom Jones)
02 Kansas City (Tom Jones)
03 Ain’t No Mountain High Enough (Tom Jones & Nancy Wilson)
04 [Ghost] Riders in the Sky (Tom Jones)
05 Mas Que Nada (Tom Jones & Sergio Mendes & the Brazil '66)
06 Money [That's What I Want] (Tom Jones)
07 [Sittin' On] The Dock of the Bay (Tom Jones)
08 Yesterday (Tom Jones)
09 Gentle on My Mind (Tom Jones)
10 Great Balls of Fire - Move On Down the Line - Long Tall Sally - Whole Lot of Shakin' Goin' On (Tom Jones & Jerry Lee Lewis)
11 Funny How Time Slips Away (Tom Jones with Jerry Lee Lewis)
12 The Look of Love [Edit] (Tom Jones & Barbara Eden)
13 One Night - Do Right Woman - Love Me - A Big Hunk O' Love - Respect - I Guess I'll Always Love You (Tom Jones & Cass Elliot)
14 It's a Man's Man's Man's World (Tom Jones)

https://www.imagenetz.de/jvJMz

Since the duets are a special highlight of this series, I decided to use photos of duets for all the covers, even though those aren't the best representation of the musical content. So for instance this cover shows Jones and Jerry Lee Lewis dueting on the show, even though Lewis is only on a small portion of the music here.

Oh, and I took the text for "This Is Tom Jones" at the top from the cover of one of the DVD boxes. It looks to be the font style and colors actually used for the show. However, the words had been stacked vertically to make more of a square shape. I rearranged them so they'd fit across the top of the cover better.