Tom Jones's 1950s: The Decade That Made Me

Someone apparently said that, if you remember the '60s,

you weren't really there.

Well, that's not true for everyone, of course.

This is me in the '60s, and I remember it all very well.

# What's new pussycat? Whoa whoa whoa whoaaa

# What's new pussycat? Whoa whoa whoa whoaaa... #

You could say that, if you remember the '50s,

it's because there wasn't much to remember, anyway.

Just a grey, boring, grown-up world.

At least until rock and roll came along,

and taught my generation that we didn't have to know our place

and that we could have our own music and our own identity.

The '60s were the reward, but the '50s was the decade that made me.

I spent all of it here in South Wales.

I think I'm going back.

MUSIC: Take The "A" Train by Duke Ellington

The early '50s were grey and boring and flat.

The '50s have been wronged.

They were not grey and gloomy and depressing at all.

It was post-war, dreary and grey. What can I tell you?

Clothes were grey and boring and flat,

and men's clothes, in particular,

and it would be regarded as unmanly to wear

anything other than something that was grey and boring and flat.

We remember the '40s - dark, depressing, violent.

The '50s were giddy and full of optimism.

It was a time when you went to a barber and you asked for

a short back and sides, and it would have been considered unmanly

to ask for anything else.

Far from being poor old thing, we're waiting for the '60s,

we were extremely cheerful people because we were in the '50s.

But it was grey. It was that post-war sadness

and trying to get...you know, trying to start again.

This whole idea that nobody ever knew about sex outside marriage

until it was the '60s - oh, for God's sake.

It was a time when everybody was waiting to get married.

When sex was something that you never talked about.

Absolutely never discussed and certainly never done.

Nah!

The 1950s were swinging, you know.

It was a little bit boring, I think,

until the end of the '50s,

when the rock and roll era started, really.

Sort of '57, '58.

And then it sort of started getting a bit exciting.

The way you think and how you feel is all about where you come from,

so I suppose my character was formed in the '50s

here in Pontypridd because I lived here until I was 24.

I didn't leave until the early '60s,

by which time I was ready to take on the world.

The 1950s, for me, growing up in the South Wales valleys,

were very special.

But that's maybe partly because I was born during the war,

so my memories of life before the '50s are of being frightened

or confused a lot of the time.

I can remember the sirens.

I can remember the noise of being under attack.

SIREN BLARES

I was, yeah, I was frightened as a child

because everybody was running around.

WHISTLE BLOWS

You remember enormously powerful feelings of anxiety,

of hating something very, very innocently and severely.

Like the Wicked Witch.

And that was the Germans, you hated the Germans.

You know, who were the Germans? Are they from outer space?

I mean, where are they from? And why are they attacking us?

To somebody who was born in 1940, the war was a living,

breathing reality.

The war was defining. The war defined us.

And I've always thought, ever since,

you either remember the war or you don't, and it's a great divide.

The thing I remember most about the war is that,

even when it ended, things stayed pretty much the same.

Everyone was happy but everything was still on ration.

The war was over, we had a party in the street, right,

when Germany surrendered.

I thought - wow, this is great!

Whatever it means, it feels great to me.

The parties were fantastic.

I mean, we'd lived in a world where the blackout was universal.

The war was over, all the lights went on, shop lights, street lights.

Our early years are of not war, but the huge aftermath of war -

rationing is still going on, the country is full of bombsites.

The fact that there aren't actually planes overhead,

dropping things on you, or V2s, is... I think

that's almost a detail, we're still in a war mentality.

When I was told that it was going to change, I couldn't quite believe it.

Especially the sweets. They said, "One day, you're going

"to be able to buy as many sweets as you want without the ration book."

I thought, "That's impossible. That's not going to happen."

But it did. Sweet rationing ended, finally, in 1953.

'They're already learning to eat sweets like little gentlemen!'

This is what's left of the County Cinema in Pontypridd.

It's just a shell now. But in the '50s,

whole families would come here on a Saturday to watch the pictures.

I remember seeing a lot of them, like The Al Jolson Story,

which I loved.

Probably because Jolson knew how to make people watch him

and listen to him.

# A million baby kisses

# I'll deliver

# If you will only sing The Swanee River. #

# Old man river

# That old man river

# He must know something

# But don't say nothing. #

GUNFIRE

My father liked gangster movies.

George Raft in particular.

He even dressed a bit like him.

Catching cold?

Yeah, maybe I shouldn't stay out so late at night.

You know, slang that we used was American slang.

My father used to talk like George Raft, you know what I mean.

"No kiddin'", you know.

He used to say things that I'm sure it wasn't Welsh, you know.

You know, "you'd better believe that", or "no kiddin'", you know?

These slick phrases, all coming from American movies.

Go on, draw.

And then there were the Westerns.

I said, draw!

These were my favourites, too.

And all of them came from a place called America.

-And I'll make ya!

-GUNFIRE

My father took me to see a film called Red River.

He loved John Wayne.

And that's the only time I think I ever went anywhere

with my father, just the two of us, was to see Red River.

So that movie is still very important to me.

Yellow belly, livered.

The cinema was the great, great thing you went to,

and the cinema was your window on the world.

I remember a landmark moment being the arrival of Oklahoma!

from America, a musical about wide open spaces

and happy, happy, singing people.

And that was America, for me.

The word "America" is sort of exciting, isn't it?

Certainly when we were a kid. Still is.

No, it's just everything good seemed to come from there.

One of the great things about growing up at that time

was that there were a lot of American GIs stationed here.

They seemed interested in us kids and treated us more like adults.

They always had sweets and gum.

And some of them were black.

The only black faces that we'd seen on the streets of Ponty

at that time.

That was the thing why I didn't feel that we were far

away from anywhere because there were Americans here.

You know what I mean? They were right here.

I saw them in the movies and there they are on the streets.

You know what I mean?

So, I didn't feel like South Wales was any different to

anywhere else in Great Britain.

The Americans were here, all over.

I think it's important that it is people like Tom Jones in bits

of the country that really would never have expected to

encounter anything as alien as an American.

That's where the Americans tended to be based,

was right across southern England into Wales.

These places where London was a foreign country.

There was an American base near where I used to live.

It was a huge base.

We had all the Americans and their dependents, which meant young men.

# I got a beautiful feeling... #

It was very exciting, I think, for young girls

because you used to go to the lido and there would be these rather

handsome-looking Americans with flat tops and sneakers and jeans.

We hadn't seen jeans, blue jeans, and things like that.

I think a couple of my friends got pregnant.

The golden glow of American GIs, who were taller than English

squaddies, because they were so well nourished.

They were golden-limbed and they were breezy

and they were enormously informal. They chewed gum.

They chatted to the girls.

And as a little girl, I thought that was dazzling.

They'd walk up the street, you know, four, five, six of them.

So I was walking my mother one day and she said,

"Now, look, there's American troops coming here, so don't say anything."

And they would go, "Hey, baby, how are you doing?" You know, like this.

"Is this your sister?" You know.

Which I thought was... "No, it's my mother!"

These are not simply the two dimensional figures that

you've seen on the screens or in the magazine pages, you actually

have real people, and they have objects with them.

They have chewing gum, they have comics, above all else.

Batman comics and Superman comics and they're big

and they're fat and they're beautifully produced.

Why would you not fall in love with that?

The South Wales mining valleys are still a place

overshadowed by the inter-war depression.

The huge levels of unemployment witnessed in towns

like Pontypridd cast a shadow over South Wales

and there was still this sense that we don't want to go back to that.

The war had brought prosperity in some ways for the first time.

There was a generation of young men who were working

for the first time, in come cases.

We were in the coal mining area, the Taff.

The river was black.

The coal was still coming down.

It would spill into the river and there were big rats there alongside,

and the black mud, so that blackness was definitely here in South Wales.

They are urban industrial communities

but places where a rural character is never that far away.

You can literally just walk up the side of the mountain.

You may have to walk past the remnants of slag heaps

and industrial dereliction, but you can get very quickly

to a space of green where you can look beyond.

In this area, this is what we had, we had mountains to play in.

We were not in a city, this is a village.

Tommy!

So, everything was very close here, I remember that.

We walked everywhere.

We never went to the other valleys.

We knew they were there but we never went there.

But then, when I started singing in the clubs,

we would visit these other places and they were different.

Wales is known as the land of song and everybody sings in Wales.

And church music was very big.

Chapel or whatever church you went to, there was always singing.

# All we like sheep

# Have gone astray

# All we like sheep. #

We sang in school.

# For ever and ever. #

When I left school, I started singing in pubs.

There were plenty of pubs, always with a piano.

LOUD SINGING

So there was music everywhere.

Nobody said, shut up!

"Yes, oh, Tommy can sing. Come on, Tommy."

So I was up and I was giving it plenty.

CHORAL SINGING

I was like a sponge, I was taking it all in.

And so the voices, I heard a lot of voices.

# And the Lord

# Amen. #

CHORAL MUSIC

My father was a strong coalminer.

My mother looked after me and my sister,

and we had aunties and uncles and cousins

and we all lived around here.

My family always sang.

We always had parties on Saturday nights, and we sang.

# Listen, my honey, listen to me

# I want you to understand

# That every silver dollar goes from hand to hand

# A woman goes from man to man

# A woman goes from man to man. #

My mother was a good-looking woman and she could get up and sing,

Roll A Silver Dollar Down Upon The Ground, and give it plenty.

My old man would be sitting there, going, "Oh, OK, then."

But then he'd get drunk enough and he'd get up

and sing Besame Mucho or My Mother's Eyes.

# Besame

# Besame mucho

# Each time I cling to your kiss

# I hear music divine

# Besame mucho

# Hold me, my darling

# And say that you'll always be mine. #

My Uncle Georgie put me on his knee one time and I was singing.

He said, what's the latest song? A Frankie Lane song.

He said, "So, sing it."

So I was singing it and he said, "Look at me when you sing it."

I said...you know, I was looking around.

He said, "Hey, look at me, don't be frightened."

He said, "I'm not going to hurt you, I'm listening to you.

"But don't be frightened of me, sing right at me,

"because you've got a great voice. Let me hear it."

So, I did and I used to look at him.

As a child, I liked to sing popular American cowboy songs

like Tennessee Ernie Ford or Frankie Laine.

# Clippetty-clopping over hill and plain

# Seems as how they'll never stop

# Clippetty-clop, clippetty-clop Clippetty-clop

# Clippetty, clippetty, clippetty Clippetty, clippetty-clopping along

# There's a plug of chaw tobaccy for a rancher in Corolla

# A guitar for a cowboy way out in Arizona

# A dress of callico for a pretty Navajo

# Get along, mule, yeah! #

Tom McGuinness joined Manfred Mann in the early '60s,

just about when I was making my name.

He grew up in South London but, in the '50s, we both started

listening to a lot of black American music, gospel and the blues.

You know, the stuff that started to give us identities

outside of our homes and communities.

-Sister Rosetta Tharpe.

-Sister Rosetta Tharpe.

-Well.

-Sister Rosetta Tharpe.

When I saw her on television at some point, it was just astounding.

-This woman bashing the hell out of a guitar...

-Yeah.

..and singing gospel.

# Didn't it rain, children

# Rain, oh, yes

# Didn't it, yes Didn't it, you know it did

# Didn't it, oh-ho Yes, how it rained. #

What year were you born?

-'41.

-'41, I was born in 1940.

So, you know, the war, and then growing up, really, after the war.

And I remember, when I was a kid in Wales,

we were all encouraged to sing because most people sing in Wales,

so it was a great place for me to grow up

because I wanted to sing, you know.

I wouldn't thought you'd fit in a choir.

-You're not a team player.

-You're right.

No, you're right. I didn't!

I didn't like singing in choirs because I couldn't shine.

-You know what I mean?

-Yeah.

They'd say, "You've got to sing this part," you know.

And I'd go, "But I don't want to sing that part.

"I want to sing the melody. I want to sing the lead part."

"Just be quiet!"

The only time in my life I was quiet was when I was told not to sing.

I was 12 years old and they told me I had TB.

It was imprisoned in bed

here in the family home for two years from 1952 to '54.

'Are you sitting comfortably?

'Then we'll begin.'

When I was young, there was a lot of TB around.

One of my cousins died from it.

Maria, her name was, and she was only 21 years old.

And one of my cousins had to have her lung removed,

so they had to take ribs out of her back.

-VOICEOVER:

-Any of these people without knowing it

may be harbouring this germ -

any one or all.

That man, he spat.

His spit may contain the germs of tuberculosis.

Many people are still living in substandard industrial

Victorian housing, places without inside toilets

or hot taps or fixed baths.

So the diseases of industrial Victorian Britain,

things like TB, were relatively common.

The doctors checked me out and they found a spot on my lung,

but they caught it early and they said,

"Tommy doesn't need drugs, he just needs to go to bed.

"You know, for at least a year," this is what they said.

You could be attacked by germs or you could be attacked by Germans

and both of them were bad for you.

You took national health for granted. I did, anyway.

"Oh, I'm sick, but they'll look after me.

"I'm British, I'm part of the system."

-VOICEOVER:

-This leaflet is coming through your letterbox

one day soon, or maybe you've already had your copy.

Read it carefully.

I wasn't frightened because I was getting a lot of attention

and I liked that.

So, it was like, "Oh, poor Tommy. Got to look after Tommy."

My mother was like, ooh, up and down the stairs

from the kitchen to where I was in the room.

HE CHUCKLES

Because the doctor said, "He cannot worry about anything,

"stress is the worst thing."

During my first year in bed, I was still contagious.

There wasn't much to do except listen to the radio,

so I did, all the time.

There was always something on the BBC, some music

I hadn't heard before, but a lot of it was family entertainment.

British pop star Marty Wilde remembers just how

frustrating some of it was, especially

when your hormones were beginning to give you trouble.

Yeah.

I mean, on every Sunday, I'm sure you were the same,

-we used to listen to Billy Cotton's Band Show...

-Yeah.

-..and Family Favourites, that was another one.

-Yeah.

My parents used to send me to bed early of a Sunday night

and it was the Palm Court Hotel Orchestra.

-Max Jaffa.

-Max Jaffa.

-Max Jaffa!

-That was it.

-You remember.

-Yeah.

That's all we were getting late at night.

I used to lie there and I thought...

I used to try and get something out of it

and I thought, well, I could see Palm,

I could see ladies in sort of...

Very sort of like Edwardian or Victorian clothes

and I thought, all right, so I imagined that.

Oh, it was a horrendous time, though.

GONG CHIMES

Ladies and gentlemen, we invite you to have a go.

Journey into Space.

WHOOSH!

BBC presents Jet Morgan in...

Dick Barton - Special Agent.

Tell us about your early days when you married.

Where did you spend your honeymoon?

-Where did I have my honeymoon?

-Yeah.

Oh, in the lambing pen!

LAUGHTER

The best station for popular music

and American music was hard to find on the dial.

It came from a place I had never heard of called Luxembourg.

And the best show on Radio Luxembourg in 1952,

just when the pop chart started, was Pete Murray's Top 20.

That Top 20 programme on Radio Luxembourg had the highest

listening figure anywhere in the world

because it was heard not only in England, but in Germany and France.

You live or die by what you're playing.

I would want to play the records, as I have always done

in the past, that I want to play.

There was nowhere else you could hear popular music.

BBC frowned on popular music.

This is Radio Luxembourg, your station of the stars,

broadcasting on 208 metres medium wave.

It's time for Top 20.

Hi, everybody.

Radio Luxembourg depended on where you were in the country.

It has this incredibly powerful transmitter,

but it is in Luxembourg.

The further south you are, the better the chance of getting it.

# Up in the morning

# Out on the job

# Work like the devil for my pay

# But that lucky old sun got nothing to do. #

I didn't want to copy anybody.

I didn't want to do exactly the same as that person.

I mean, I used to do it for effect, like Vaughn Monroe,

when I used to do Ghost Riders In The Sky.

I used to go... MUFFLED SINGING

Because that's how he sounded.

So, I mean, it was like that, but just for fun.

# An old cowpoke went riding out one dark and windy day

# Upon a ridge he rested as he went along his way

# When all at once a mighty herd of red-eyed cows he saw

# A'ploughin' through the ragged skies

# And up a cloudy draw. #

I knew that I was picking up information,

I'm the first one to say it.

You know, where do you get your style?

From listening to the radio.

# Ghost riders in the sky. #

Halfway through my two-year rest, we got a TV,

maybe like a lot of other people, because we had a new queen.

All set to film the full splendour of the momentous day.

But, anyway, guess where it lived?

In the back parlour, along with me and my bed.

The TV was very important because then, the second year,

when I wasn't contagious any more, the kids would come in, you know.

Partly to see me, but I think mostly to see the TV.

So that was great, again, you see. I felt that thing.

I had something that nobody else in the street had.

# Andy goes down, isn't he small?

# Andy stands up, isn't he tall? #

But I was watching Andy Pandy and Muffin The Mule.

# We want Muffin, everybody sing

# We want Muffin, the mule. #

Hello.

So you're here at last.

I would watch anything that was on there because it was so fascinating.

Cos television was brand-new then.

You know, just to look at it and think,

the wonder of television.

I remember watching Robin Hood in the first year.

And now I think about it, as there was only one channel in 1953,

the BBC, everyone else watching TV in Britain

when I was watching it were seeing exactly the same thing.

-Are you a friend of Sir Guy of Gisborne?

-That villain?

-Or the Sheriff of Nottingham?

-These are no friends of mine.

Good answers.

We'll do you no harm, so long as you do us no mischief.

-HE LAUGHS

-Mischief, sir?

I suffer mischief, I don't do it.

Mahalia Jackson, that's the first time that I saw her.

# You may talk about the men of Gideon

# Talk about the men of Saul

# Not like the good old Joshua

# And the battle of Jericho... #

And I thought, "Who is this person?"

# Jericho

# Jericho, oh, Jericho

# Joshua fit the Battle of Jericho

# And the wall came tumbling down

# Alleluia... #

My family didn't have television.

Well, I think they did... I think my family got a television

by the time I was in my late teens. It was about this big,

it was in a big, brown piece of furniture,

given pride of place,

and the family sat round in armchairs to look at it.

Um...

And my mother became enthralled by it.

Frankie Vaughan I saw.

# Ba-ba-ba, hey!

# For love came just in time

# You found me just in time

# And changed my lonely life

# On that lovely day

# You changed my lonely life that lovely day... #

Yeah!

I'd seen The Jolson Story.

I think Frankie Vaughan had learned from Al Jolson

cos he had a lot of the moves, he was larger than life.

The sound of his voice was... was rich and powerful.

And, er, I liked that, and I liked what he was doing.

I was a singer and I loved singing and I could sing, I felt,

as good as anybody that was coming on there.

So it was a possibility

that I would one day be on the TV.

I didn't make it onto that TV until 1962.

But, luckily, the '50s was already hotting up

in the arrival of teddy boys and girls.

JAZZ MUSIC

The first time we had an identity

and a look that was different from our parents.

Fashion...

changed radically.

We went completely the opposite, not really knowing it.

I didn't think, "Oh, my father's jacket is short,

"I'll wear a long one. My father's trousers are wide..."

I didn't think that, I just didn't like the way they looked.

And I didn't like short haircuts. I wanted a Tony Curtis haircut.

The whole point of the teddy boys

was they draw on a huge range of influences.

The reason they're called teddy boys

is because it's named after Edwardian,

they're wearing Edwardian clothes.

A whole load of South London youth decided that they rather liked that

and then they started messing it about.

We had the drainpipe trousers, the suede shoes, you know,

with the crepe soles, and the long jackets.

They wore the thick crepe shoes, which had...

evolved from the desert shoes,

which had come from the North African campaign.

So this whole range of different ideas and styles

that they blended together.

They incorporated the bootlace ties and the Slim Jim ties

that they'd seen in Hollywood,

they looked like Mississippi gamblers.

The sheriff or the marshal, you know, had a black suit on.

If you look at the Gunfight At The OK Corral,

they had narrow pants,

you know, with these black suits, long jackets, so it was like that.

I'm thinking about more about that now than I did, you know,

than I have before.

It was groovy, it was cool, to look like that.

Would you rather go with a teddy boy than an ordinary boy?

Teddy boy, any day.

-A teddy boy any day?

-Yes.

-Why?

Don't know. People wearing bell bottom trousers,

I wouldn't be seen dead in with one.

So, you'd have the black jeans with the green stitching

and a jacket that your father gave you, well, I did, anyway,

and then I got this velvet from the glove factory I was working in

and my mother put on this black velvet collar,

so there I was, a teddy boy.

I looked like, you know, slicker than slick.

JAZZ MUSIC

You know, I wanted to be a man, desperately.

And it wasn't until I was talking to a tarty-looking girl in a doorway

in Pontypridd,

and this girl, you know, had tight, they were wearing those things,

big earrings hanging down, you know, tight sweaters,

and she was a swimmer, so she was, you know, well-built girl,

so she was, like, looking like the girls were looking

and there I was, looking like the fellas.

So, I'm chatting her up at the doorway and my mother

and sister walked straight past me.

You know, I went, "Hello, Ma..." NEEDLE SCRATCH

..and when I got back home, she said,

"I'm taking that velvet collar off there

"because you've become a teddy boy."

The teddy boy phenomenon predates rock and roll

by about five or six years.

The idea of a youth culture growing up, a gang culture growing up,

a desire to express an identity that is separate

and deliberately rejecting society,

that's already all in place.

What is needed is a soundtrack to go with that.

It's ten years on from the end of the war,

people are now teenagers who only just really remember the war years.

There's this feeling of...enough.

It's actually not a bad place if you can just lift yourself out

of the mental greyness of austerity '50s.

We were ready for change, we were, I mean, the stuffy old world

that was demonstrating in the '50s that it was out of date,

we were preparing the way for the changes that would come.

And at this point,

suddenly, there's a searchlight from across the Atlantic,

which is rock and roll

and, suddenly, the whole landscape seems brighter.

Ah!

TOM LAUGHS

# One, two, three o'clock Four o'clock, rock

# Five, six, seven o'clock Eight o'clock, rock

# Nine, ten, eleven o'clock Twelve o'clock, rock

# We're going to rock around the clock tonight... #

There's two drummers on here.

There's one, going...

Then the other one does that.

# We're going to rock, rock, rock till broad daylight

# Going to rock... #

I mean, nobody had ever done that before, and the sound of it,

listen to the drums.

# Three and four

# If the band slows down We'll yell for more

# Going to rock around the clock tonight... #

Some of the kids,

they said, "Yeah, it's all right." You know. It's all right?

I couldn't believe it. It's tremendous stuff.

GUITAR SOLO

Oh...

I mean, it hit me like a tonne of bricks. I couldn't believe it.

That record, right there, Rock Around The Clock,

that was the beginning.

Then Elvis Presley came, and then Jerry Lee Lewis came.

So they were the three most important records, you know.

Not in sequence.

But maybe they will be when you edit it,

but it's Rock Around The Clock... LAUGHTER

Rock Around The Clock, Heartbreak Hotel,

and then Whole Lotta Shaking.

Bill Haley's first single in Britain is a hit

because Radio Luxembourg play it. BBC didn't play it at all.

# Going to rock, going to rock around the clock tonight... #

Here it comes.

INSTRUMENTAL

Da-da-da!

I thought it was thrilling.

There'd never been anything like it, its impact was huge.

We all were dancing, dancing, dancing and jumping around,

not ballroom dancing, of course - that was suddenly over.

And there was... That too was enormously liberating

and spontaneous.

# We're going to rock, rock, rock till the broad daylight

# We're going to rock Going to rock

# Around the clock tonight. #

GUITAR SOLO

Da-da-da-da.

DRUM AND SYMBOLS

Jesus!

I mean...wow!

MUSIC: Charmaine by Mantovani

The trouble was, if you wanted to hear rock and roll,

or jive with your girlfriend,

there wasn't anywhere to do it in Treforest or Pontypridd in 1955.

Dance halls didn't like teddy boys and girls and they hated our music.

This was the dance hall in Treforest.

This is the Catholic hall.

They would have dances here on a Saturday night.

My mother and father came here when they were young.

So that's how old this place is, and they were ballroom dancing.

It was only ten years after the war had ended, you know what I mean?

So everybody was relaxing now, they were all going ballroom dancing

and having a few drinks on the weekend.

Everything was nice, everything was calm,

the Germans were not bombing us any more, and all of a sudden...

# Bam-bam, one, two, three... #

It was like, Jesus!

JIVE MUSIC

It was like almost as bad, to the adults, as being under attack.

And that's how powerful rock and roll was in 1955.

It's difficult to explain it,

the explosion that rock and roll gave you,

gave you as a kid.

Obviously, you didn't want your parents' music.

MUSIC: The White Cliffs Of Dover by Glenn Miller & Orchestra

Or Glenn Miller, we don't want to listen...

to Glenn Miller, particularly, you know, when you're 14.

Glenn Miller, yeah, I mean...

I think he should've lived

and his music should've died, but I mean, that's...

LAUGHTER

That's just...

No! That's just my opinion, please. I'm not, no...

That's what I thought at the time, anyway.

With ballroom dancing, it seems to me, you know, they liked it

because they were holding, they had an excuse to hold one another.

Now, the jive, because we were like slicker than slick, you know,

with the hair and the velvet collars and the girl, you know?

You know, like this, you know, chewing gum and everything.

And looking, you know, at the girls from a distance.

Phew! You know what I mean? "Look at MY girlfriend."

As were the other older people, were like, you know,

"This is mine and leave her alone."

Everybody would be going around in a big circle.

-You know, the ballroom dancing...

-Yes.

-A big circle!

And you'd think, what if somebody went...

HE WHISTLES You know, all change?

I don't know what they would've done going the other way.

And then to jive, you know, in the corner of these...

I used to go to a Catholic hall, it was a big dance...

a dance hall in Treforest and,

if you were caught jiving, you know,

you'd have to go in the corner to have a jive

and 20 minutes, you could have a 20-minute intermission

and they'd play rock and roll records.

We'd go in there for the 20 minutes and,

soon as he'd come back on, we'd leave!

So that was it, but we were starved for...

Well, you couldn't hear it.

-No.

-You could hear it on Radio Luxembourg on a bad signal

-coming in late at night.

-Yeah.

It just seemed so exotic.

The sound changed, I think that was another big thing.

Because the fellas that I was working with,

-they were amateur musicians playing in dance bands.

-Yeah, yeah.

And they could not play rock and roll, but they would condemn it.

They'd say, "Oh, what are you listening to that crap for?"

And I'd say, "Can you play it?"

"Of course we can play it, it's 12 bar blues."

"I don't know how many bars are in it, but can you do it?"

And I'd go and see them, in these dance halls,

and then Monday morning, I'd say,

"Hey, you're full of... You're not playing it!"

But they didn't seem to get it like we did.

You know, the young, the teenagers. We were getting it, right?

# Well, since my baby left me

# Well, I found a new place to dwell

# It's down at the end of Lonely Street at

# Heartbreak Hotel... #

Rock and roll is seen from its first arrival as being,

in the words of the Daily Mail, "the negro's revenge".

It is also a fear of sex.

# Although it's always crowded

# You still can find some room

# For broken-hearted lovers to cry away their gloom... #

It is seen as unbridled sexual expression.

And obviously, that's what rock and roll is,

that's what the original expression "rock and roll" means.

# Well, since my baby left me (Bam, bam)

# I found a new place to dwell... #

You see, it's like that.

The voice is isolated and then, you just, bam-bam.

# Down at the end of Lonely Street at...

# Heartbreak hotel... #

Then you're in, then the music's in. Never been done before.

They knew what would excite the kids, the breaks.

# She can't help it The girl can't help it. #

We were also getting excited by seeing our rock and roll heroes

on the big screen in the Hollywood movies, like The Girl Can't Help It.

# Ready, set, go, man, go!

# I got a girl that I love so I'm ready

# Ready, ready, teddy, I'm ready

# Ready, ready, teddy, I'm ready

# Ready, ready teddy

# I'm ready-ready-ready to rock and roll... #

CHATTER

Elvis was in a string of movies, and one of my favourites was Loving You.

We all looked like Bill Gates.

And then Elvis came along.

And we went, "Wow."

# I got a woman here She can be... #

Elvis knew what he was doing...

..when he looked at the camera, when he moved.

I think he looked in the mirror a lot, you know?

Elvis, I was in the Elvis Fan Club,

which was a bit of a swindle, actually,

it was 11 shillings a year, you got one photograph

and Elvis never came over here and we were always waiting for him,

but of course he was so different, I suppose cos he was sexy,

he was really sexy, and he was so handsome.

This sexy thing again, he was...

Nobody had ever gone, "Uh-huh-huh."

HE GRUNTS

I remember listening to, er... Hound Dog, I think it was,

and there's a little "whoop" in it, in his voice,

and your whole body sort of goes, "Whoop!"

And you think, "Blimey, what's going on?"

Uh-huh-huh.

How do you write down...? I want you to sing...

HE GRUNTS

You can't.

In fact, rock and roll churned us up so much

that my girlfriend, Linda, got pregnant

and we had a son, Mark.

We're still married 59 years later.

'And this is exactly where I first saw her

'when I was only ten years old.

'This is the street where she lived.'

Cos this was not paved, this was all... It was a dirt road.

So Linda used to sleep up in that room there.

And so I would serenade her from here.

Irene Goodnight, that was the one, so I changed it from Irene to Linda.

So Linda Goodnight. You know...

She was there and her father used to get...

ticked off cos I used to whistle as well a lot, you know,

when I'd come past, just to let her know that it was me.

So he used to say, "That whistling crow is out there again."

Linda was pregnant and so something had to be done.

Thank God, my parents and Linda's parents

agreed on us getting married,

because you must have your parents' consent,

under 18, and they agreed on it

because they could see that we were in love with one another.

Of course, he was quite lucky because he, as I understand it,

had a fairly...had parents who were fairly liberal about it,

and that was very, very unusual, I would think, in 1956.

You wouldn't find many of them like that.

I mean, the rule in my house was

there would be no sex until you were married.

That was assumed to be the case and was assumed to be the ethic

and, of course, the human race isn't quite like that,

but if you fell from grace and committed a sin

and got pregnant, then it was a total catastrophe.

Do you think that you ought to have sex before marriage?

I don't think it matters, really.

What do you think?

-I don't think you ought to at all.

-You don't think...?

No, it's more...

it's more important to have it, you know, when you're married.

I was now suddenly a teenage husband and father,

just when I started seeing British rock and rollers

on TV for the first time, like Cliff Richard and Marty Wilde.

MUSIC: Six-Five Special by Bob Cort Skiffle Group

# The Six-Five Special steaming down the line

# Six-Five Special Right on time... #

Six-Five Special was the first one.

You know? And I remember Don Lang.

-Yeah, yeah.

-He was a trombone player.

And he was a jazz, you know, he was a jazz musician,

and he was trying to sing,

# The Six-Five Special's coming down the line

# The Six-Five Special Right on time... #

And he'd go... INDISTINCT

Get the... I mean,

you know, because he's like supposed to be rock and roll,

you know, with a trombone.

You don't use a trombone in a rock and roll record.

It's time to jive on the old Six-Five!

INSTRUMENTAL

It all seems like ancient history, doesn't it,

when we talk about it now? Things have changed so tremendously.

Well, it was a long time ago now. HE LAUGHS

-Thank you, Tom!

-Well, I mean, it was! The '50s, you know.

-What is that, 60 years ago?

-Yeah, yeah.

-Isn't it?

-And it was life-changing for our generation.

-Definitely.

-The music, the fashion, film, novels,

everything changed in a very short space.

-That IS 60, isn't it? 1955 to 2015.

-It is.

60 years, so I mean, 60 years...

When you think of it as 60 years, it IS ancient history, isn't it?

THEY LAUGH

# Well you see now I've got a girl

# And we stay out late

# Almost every night

# Well, the people just stare and they declare

# Well, well It just ain't right. #

How old were you when you got on the telly, then?

Mm...I was 17.

-17.

-17 years old.

All of those early British records,

it was different for you cos you came slightly later,

-not being funny...

-No, I know.

You came at a slightly better time for musicians because,

when we started, there were no musicians that could play

-rock and roll guitar, not really.

-And you couldn't get the guitars.

You couldn't, and you couldn't...

If you listen to all those early British records,

they had that jazz cos they were all jazz-influenced guitarists.

This old British sound.

# Three cool cats

# Three cool cats

# They looked like angels from up above

# Three cool cats really fell in love

# Three cool chicks made three fools out of

# Three cool cats

# Three cool cats. #

And then Oh Boy! I saw you on there.

-Those were the early days.

-Yeah.

-When I thought Cliff Richard was short...

-He is!

Well, I know, but... THEY LAUGH

I didn't realise you were so tall!

You know, looking at him on the telly.

But I mean, in the '50s, I was in the pubs.

I was doing basically the same as you were doing,

but I wasn't on television.

You know, I was singing in pubs, doing '50s rock and roll.

This is where I played my first gig in 1957.

I sang six songs here, for which I was paid a pound.

I was trying to bring rock and roll to the South Wales Valleys,

and pubs and working men's clubs were all there was at the time.

60 years later, it looks a bit different,

but this was the Wood Road Working Men's Club.

The Wood Road Non-political, because you couldn't talk politics in it.

-Why?

-Cos it was against the rules.

That's why they called it, that's why they called it...

the Non-political Club.

If you wanted to go and talk, if you were Conservative,

you'd go to the Con Club, which was a Conservative club.

Mostly, it was Labour.

South Wales was Labour because of the industry, you know, coal mining.

So Conservatives were a bit upper-crust, if you like.

When we would go to the pictures and the news reader would come on,

we were taught to boo Churchill

because he was the cause of the 1926 strike,

even though he saved the world in the Second World War.

Well, he didn't save South Wales as far as they were concerned.

So when Clement Atlee would come on, we would say, "Hooray!"

We didn't really know why we were saying it, we were taught to say it.

My parents were saying, "There's a good man, Clement Atlee.

"He will be great. After the war, to build the country up again,

"we need a Labour government."

You want to go in there or not?

Yeah, sure.

-Where is he? How are you, all right?

-Nice to meet you.

-How's it going?

-Bit of a Memory Lane trip, is it?

-That's right.

-Hasn't changed a bit, this place, has it?

-Oh, I don't know...

-Well...

'People dressed up to go drinking.

'They never went casual, especially on a Saturday night.

'You'd have to have a suit on and a collar and tie.

'You'd take your girlfriend or your wife,

'they'd have to look like a million dollars,

'the best they possibly could.

'They would wear their best clothes

'to come in here on a Saturday night.'

Well, this is it.

It's not the same now, though. No, this is nothing like it used to be.

The women were only allowed in one Saturday a month but,

when I was a teenager,

it was every Saturday, the women would be allowed in.

But that was all.

You know, only Saturday night. It was a men-only club.

Members only.

So it was like that, but it was all very orderly

and I think that's why they created these working men's clubs

so that people would be in order rather than going into a pub

and not know what you're walking into, you know.

And then you couldn't use any bad language.

You know, in those days, you'd never swear in front of a lady so,

if you did, your name would be in the box

and they'd make a complaint and you'd either

have your membership taken away from you or something.

So it was like that then.

-All right, boys?

-All right, Tom?

-Take care.

-Goodnight, Tom.

So when I was singing in these working men's clubs, the reaction...

..was they would get worked up.

I was singing Breathless, I think, a Jerry Lee Lewis song,

and this girl was banging her head on the stage.

I don't think that had happened before.

I wanted to give as much of myself...

I didn't want to leave anything to chance, you know.

Here I am and here it is.

-# What'd I say

-What'd I say

-# Tell me what'd I say, what'd I say

-What'd I say

# Tell me what'd I say, baby

-# What'd I say

-Tell me what'd I say, honey

-# What'd I say

-Tell me what'd I say

-# What'd I say

-Tell me what'd I say, oh

-# Now, tell me one more time

-One more time

-# Tell me one more time

-One more time

# Tell me one more time

-# One more time

-Tell me one more time, one more time

-# One more time

-Tell me one more time

-# One more time

-Tell me one more time, whoa

# Tell me what'd I say

# What'd I say

-# Tell me what'd I say

-What'd I say

-# Tell me what'd I say, yeah

-What'd I say

-# Tell me what'd I say

-What'd I say

# Tell me what'd I say

# What'd I say

# Tell me what'd I say. #

There was one thing I still had to do as a singer.

I had to record.

I would have done it in Cardiff, if I could but,

like all the British rock and rollers just ahead of me,

I knew I had to go to London.

Which, before the Severn Bridge was opened much later,

was like going to a foreign country.

Right in. One, two, three...

# All right... #

Teenagers in South Wales in the '50s are listening to the same music,

they're watching the same television,

they're going to the same movies as people were everywhere.

And that gave people the sense

that they were part of something bigger,

that there was a bigger world out there but,

at the same time,

they might look at the streets that they lived in

and it didn't look like some of the images that you might see

on the television of what London looked like,

and it gave people a sense that maybe you need to escape to get to

this popular culture, that somehow this popular culture was elsewhere.

The best thing about Newcastle at the time, on the Tyne Bridge,

there was a big sign saying,

"The A1 South."

But we had to go to London.

Had to go to London.

Hank and I came to London in April of '58.

16 years old, from school,

and then we read about a place called the 2 I's Coffee Bar,

which was in Soho.

It just sounded sexy, Soho.

Everybody went there.

And it was like a little coffee bar, probably 20 feet long

and 12 feet wide.

People would jam with you, they'd get up and play with you.

And during that period, we played with guys that became The Shadows.

We didn't know at the time.

We were the first steel band to come to England,

1951.

You would go to the Contemporary Club, the Sunset Club,

then you have the Glass Bucket, you have the Hay Hill, and we used

to be going from club to club and we were well-known in those clubs.

People used to mix a lot in those days.

The pimps, the good, the bad, the ugly, everybody mixed, no problem.

HE LAUGHS

I saw a couple of guys, you know, having a kiss

and a cuddle in a doorway in 1958.

I thought he was giving him the kiss of life, to be honest.

-But, you know...

-He was.

-He was!

Yeah. But it was,

and some lovely strange girls were around in the 2 I's.

Lovely girls.

Good, though.

I had this idea that I was going to go to London, you know,

and I was going to become a singer.

You know, I said, "I'm going to be a recording artist.

"I'm going to make records, I'm going to meet Elvis Presley."

"Yeah, Tom, you know, you're a great singer and we all love you but...

"Elvis Presley?"

# Well, since my baby left... #

It turned out to be pretty much like I expected it to be.

You know, there's no big surprises like,

"Oh, my God, I thought this was going to be better than this."

Or, "That would be different than this."

But it's not.

You know, you can achieve to buy a lovely house

and you can have a lovely car,

and you can put your children in better schools, better education.

But to come straight from a working class background, you know,

doing menial jobs, to boom, to stardom, is a big leap.

But I was prepared for it.

So you're working out a bit here, boys? Are you rugby players?

-It's a pleasure to meet you.

-Yeah?

Christ, they're making them bigger nowadays.

Thank you very much, flattering!

-All right. Nice to see you.

-Nice to meet you.

Cannot believe we just bumped into him.

-THEY LAUGH

-Can't believe it!

-Well, Mr Jones, I'll call you...

-Remember that?

-Whoa!

-That's me and you, 1966.

-No, really?!

-Is that a joke?

-No.

-Yeah, there you go.

Tom lived by there and I lived by here.

-I lived in number 1.

-How long ago was this, sorry?

-That's when...

-It's not...

-It's Not Unusual.

-My grandfather...

-LAUGHTER

-It was March 1965.

-Oh, yeah.

-1965? Wow.

That's mad.

-Look at that. So that was you, then?

-Yeah, that was me.

Look at me, I've got dark hair there!

I'll tell you what it was, it was when it got to number one,

-you had the New Musical Express and that was the front cover.

-Oh, yeah?

-They sent me the actual photograph.

-Ah, right.

-Yeah, sure, of course.

-Can someone take a picture?

Boys are bigger now than they used to be!

-I used to be considered tall when I was here.

-What you doing?

Can't cut me out with Tom Jones!

Timing is very important. That's what I lived through.

You know, I was 15 when rock and roll kicked in - perfect.

What they created in the '50s is why we're all here

in the rock and roll or the music business now.

I think it was years before one could look back and say,

"Yes, that was the moment when the world stood on its head,

"that was the moment we started thinking differently."

I saw a programme last night, funnily enough,

about love in Britain, you know.

Love and sex, and they said that more young people got married

in the '50s than ever before or since.

How about that, then? So you've got to put it down to rock and roll.

You know, you have to!

So it's not war that we were making, it was love.

MUSIC: It's Not Unusual by Tom Jones

# It's not unusual to be loved by anyone

# It's not unusual to have fun with anyone

# But when I see you hanging about with anyone

# It's not unusual to see me cry. #