Tom Jones - Tom Jones & Jools Holland on CD

Description

The collaboration of the year touches down when Tom 'the voice' Jones and Jools 'the piano' Holland release their joint foray of musical delight, Tom Jones & Jools Holland. A roots rock 'n' roll album, it will have exactly the same effect on you as it did on them; make you remember why you loved music in the first place. Already sharing a love of rhythm and blues, country and rock n roll, Tom Jones & Jools Holland is a collection of some of the greatest songs the genres have to offer mixed with some brand new tracks, all performed with the exuberant power and spontaneous enthusiasm that only a pairing of this kind could produce. 'Tom Jones & Jools Holland is a barrage of timeless tracks, with Howlin' Wolf's "200lbs Of Heavenly Joy" kick starting a campaign of classics. "Good Morning Blues/One O'Clock Jump", "My Babe", "Who Will The Next Fool Be" and the classic "Hanging My Heart Up For You" add to the mix and offer the most intimate insight into the influences that have formed two of the UK's greatest ever performers. Tom Jones & Jools Holland also harbours some future classics in the form of new, joint-Jools-and-Jones records written especially for the album. The opening track, the splendidly titled "Life's Too Short", is the first fruit of the Jones / Jools tree. Amazon.co.uk Blandly, if wholly accurately, entitled Tom Jones & Jools Holland, this buoyant rhythm 'n' blues / rock 'n' roll hook-up between England's entertaining piano-plonking proponent and the bellowing Boyo from the Valleys may have been better served by sticking with the abandoned album titles of "Rough & Ready" and "Tom Sings, Jools Swings". Not that the contents, fine as they are, will come as any surprise to those acquainted with the nature of these particular beasts. Conjoined by a mutual interest in rock 'n' roll roots, Jones and Holland blast through an array of old-time jewels (Jerry Lee Lewis, Howlin' Wolf, Charlie Rich, Count Basie) steadily maintaining that all-important equilibrium between sophistication and spit 'n' sawdust and barely pausing for breath before the mellower farewells of Big Bill Broonzy's "Glory Of Love" and the country sentimentality of Lefty Frizzell's "Mom And Dad's Waltz". Some of the self-penned numbers sound formulaic but then, when you! think about it, they need to be. All in all, possibly the most fun you can have at a Teddy Boy's Wedding Reception this side of Wizzard's Introducing Eddy And The Falcons LP. --Kevin Maidment