elvis versus tom jones in paris

just came back from tom jones concert in le zenith paris france
well if I am comparing the crowd there is two elvis fans in paris for only one tom jones fan !
elvis the concert one week ago : 90 % of the arena capacity
tom jones today 50 % ( they have reduced the capacity of the arena with curtains )

3 elvis hits in the tom jones song line up

I'll never fall in love again
green green grass of home
high heel sneakers ( he mentioned elvis version to the audience )

but no misunderstanding the tom jones show was outstanding
and the ambiance hottest as ever !

sure he likes the song! he's been doing hi-heel since moons ago (it is featured in 1971 live at caesar's)

His latest album (Mr Jones) has been a flop

You do realise that "The Green Green Grass of Home" was a hit for Tom Jones before Elvis ever dreamed of recording for what for him not a hit!

And the other two songs you mention were also not Elvis' originals.

Your post would have been correct in saying "Tom sang 3 songs which Elvis recorded."

good remark kiwi "hit" was not the right world to qualify the 3 songs !

"also covered" defintively is ( and now stored in my little brain )

my intention was not to put down mister tom ! ( I like him )


as I said before beeing non english langage born ( we are many in this situation ) is sometime a tough way to make a ...... post !

Green Green Grass Of Home is not a TJ original either. Can't remember the fellow who cut it first, but of course Tom made the song famous.

Call me a blashphemer, but i prefer TJ's versions of these two songs (GGGOF and INFILA) to the Elvis ones.

I believe Jerry Lee Lewis may have been the first to have recorded Green, Green, Grass of Home......believe it or not or at least from what I am to understand Tom Jones heard Jerry Lee's version first or something like that.

Regarding Tom Jones........you have to give this guy credit he still performs a good 8 months out of the year, and now he has just pushed over the 60 mark...sings alot of his music if not all of it as tho he recorded them last week.........

For some reason Jones never really got his due.......however he is worth something like $600,000.00 million so i'm sure he's hurting all the way to the bank...LOL.......

But again he's No Elvis but certainly One of the performers out there that almost has a little of what Elvis had............well kinda....LOL.....Still nothing like Elvis !

Nevertheless a fine Performer,........to bad Elvis wasn't here to continue what Tom Jones has done for his fans over the years.........

PEP

PEP -

Wasn't Jack Green the original 'GGGOH' ?

Jerry Lee heard this version.

Tom heard Jerry Lee's.

Elvis heard Tom's.

One of the Memphis Maffia [Lacker?] was pissed off because he played one of the earlier versions to Elvis who didn't rate the song at all.

When Elvis later heard Tom singing it, he flipped over it.

I still think Tom brought something to the song which all the other versions lack.

Yeah, Jerry Lee Lewis was the name i associated with the track. To be honest, i've never heard his version of it.

Green Green Grass of Home - Wasn't that the story where Elvis heard the song while driving
his bus back home to Memphis on George Klein's radio station WHBQ - He kept on calling
George to play the song over and over - something like that I think.

Our band does that tune and I try to keep it as close to E's version as possible. Sounds pretty good!!!

Green Green Grass of Home - Wasn't that the story where Elvis heard the song while driving
his bus back home to Memphis on George Klein's radio station WHBQ - He kept on calling
George to play the song over and over - something like that I think.

That sounds correct to me. I think Elvis was supposed to cut that song already in 1967 when he had a session booked but got cancelled. Would have been interesting to hear how he adapted the song back then.

"Well I’ve always been a big Jerry Lee Lewis fan. So I was in New York in 1965, and I had gone into this record shop called Colony Record Shop, to ask did they have Jerry Lee Lewis’ latest album, whatever it was. And it was the first country album that he had made. It was called Country Songs for City Folk.

"So I bought it. And I went back to the hotel and I played the album on a little record player that I used to carry around with me, and I heard this Green, Green Grass of Home. I thought, my God, that is a great song, that.

"I came back to England, and I was doing some TV shows, in black and white in those days, and I did The Green, Green Grass of Home on TV. And we did it like in a jail. But you don’t know it is a jail, until the camera pulls back, because it about a man in jail, the song is. So the camera pulled back you see the bars, and I’m in this jail, singing The Green, Green Grass of Home.

"The following day I go to get car filled up with petrol, and the fella on the pump said, oh what was that song you did on the telly last night, when you were in jail? That’s a fantastic song! So I thought, oh, you know, it has had an effect. Then different people were coming up to me the following day, saying how much they liked this song that I sang in jail. So they didn’t you know, know at the time it was anything, but everyone was getting affected by it.

"I said to Peter Sullivan, my recording manager, look, I’d like to record this. And he said, a country song? I said yeah. Because I hadn’t done a country song up to that point. And he said, all right, if you want to give it a whirl, we will. So Les Reid did the arrangement, and Les made it more of a pop song, than a country song, because when Jerry Lee Lewis did it, it was strict country.

"When I did it, it was more, it was a bigger band, you know, with strings on it, and more of a lush arrangement to it. To get it sort of mainstream, as we used to say. So we did, and it was a great arrangement, and it worked. It came out and it went to number one. So that was my second number one. It’s Not Unusual was the first in ’65, and The Green Grass of Home came out in ’66, which was my second number one.

"I just liked the song. I thought it was great song. And there was a twist to it, you know, when you are singing about the green, green grass of home, but then it's about, you know, the man who is in jail. And he says, I realise I was only dreaming. He was dreaming about home. So I had this picture and me coming from South Wales, of course, I thought of my home, which was Wales.

"But I thought it was only affecting me that way. I had the picture of Wales and being green, you know, the green, green grass of home to me was South Wales. But then everyone else thought the same thing. When the record came out, first of all they thought it was a Welsh song, that someone had written this song for me about Wales.

"But then I realise then it is about anybody’s home, because it never mentions the name of a city or a town or a country or anything. It just says, the green, green grass of home. Which could be anybody’s home, whoever is listening to it thinks about where they come from, and in my case, it was South Wales."

Last edited by Swedish on Mon Jul 07, 2003 1:21 am, edited 1 time in total.

great and acurate post swedish !

interesting story from TJ

I had to recognize that tom jones version of GGOH is pretty cool

Saw Tom Jones in Rotterdam last Saturday (look in the off topic section).
The man puts on a great live show! The opening of this show is really cool.

Sonny

Colin B wrote:

Wasn't Jack Green the original 'GGGOH' ?

No, Colin - you are thinking of 'There Goes My Everything'

The original version of 'GGGOH' was by Porter Wagoner.

Glad we got that cleared up !