It’s difficult to envision a world without rock ‘n’ roll, but the genre didn’t truly come into existence until Tom Jones reached his teenage years. Even before a particular song profoundly impacted his life, fundamentally altering his existence, Jones had already cultivated a passion for performing. This passion was sparked by his involvement in a youth choir during his formative years.
Jones’ love of music intensified when he faced a battle with tuberculosis, which prevented him from being an ordinary teenager for two years. While his illness left him bed-bound, he had little else to do but listen to music, which likely proved to be beneficial in the long term despite being devastating at the time. There was little else he cared for in the world, and once he regained full fitness, there was no looking back.
Before finding fame, Jones worked in a glove factory, where the riveting sounds of the radio accompanied him. During this job, he was first exposed to the pioneering sounds of Bill Haley and His Comets. The group brought rock ‘n’ roll to the masses in 1956 with the re-release of ‘Rock Around The Clock’.
This pivotal moment was a musical awakening for Jones, and the song’s boundary-pushing tactics immediately inspired him. The singer felt ‘Rock Around The Clock’ represented the future of music. Yet he was shocked to discover that many of his colleagues in the glove factory didn’t feel the same way as he did.
While speaking to The Guardian in 2008, Jones said of the track: “I worked as an apprentice glove cutter when I left school at 15. All the other guys working in the factory were amateur musicians. One day ‘Rock Around the Clock’ came on the radio and I started singing along. ‘Will you shut up?’ they shouted.”
He continued: “‘It’s fantastic!’ I replied, and they told me it was nothing but 12-bar blues and that anyone could play it. ‘I don’t give a shit, it’s great,’ I said, and challenged them to do a version of it. They did, and it sounded terrible. With rock ‘n’ roll, it may only be three chords, but it’s how you play them that counts.”
Furthermore, while reflecting on the impact of the 1950s on him as a musician with the BBC in 2016, Jones again singled out Bill Haley’s ‘Rock Around The Clock’ as a personal highlight from the decade.
Jones listened to the track in a clip shared on social media while intermittently providing commentary. At one stage, he points out how they had two drummers on ‘Rock Around The Clock’ and explained how “nobody had ever done that before”.
Jones then provided a history lesson in rock ‘n’ roll and the importance of ‘Rock Around The Clock’ in its evolution, stating: “It’s tremendous. 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, then Jerry Lee Lewis came. They were the three most important records, ‘Rock Around The Clock’, ‘Heartbreak Hotel’, and then ‘Whole Lotta Shakin”.”
‘Rock Around The Clock’ marked the start of rock ‘n’ roll as we know it, as Jones pointed out. While it may sound primitive compared to later material, context is crucial, and World War II was still a recent memory for most. However, with this track, Haley provided a missile of hope for the future, and Jones was hanging off his every word.