Music legend Sir Tom Jones was shocked when his father continued to work down the coal mines in Wales, even after he had found fame during the 1960s.
Sir Tom Jones has recalled how his father kept working down the coal mines when he found stardom.
The 85-year-old singer has confessed that he was anguished to discover that his dad Thomas Woodward was still working in the coal mines of the Rhondda Valley in Wales after he achieved his first chart-topper with It’s Not Unusual in 1965.
Speaking in the BBC series In My Own Words, Tom recalled: “I had a new Jaguar, I had a new house, and I went back to Wales, because I would go back whenever I could.
“One Sunday night, I’d been out with my father and when we got home, my mother was cutting sandwiches for him. I said, ‘Where are you going?’ He said, ‘I’m going to work, I’m on the night shift.’ I said, ‘You can’t go to work.’ And he said, ‘I’m a coal miner, that’s what I do.’
“I said, ‘But I’m making a lot of money now.’ He said, ‘Yeah, but how long is it going to last?’
“That was a big deal for me, to get him out of the coal mine – it was a dangerous job.”
Tom grew up in the Welsh town of Pontypridd and he has nothing but happy memories of his upbringing.
The Green, Green Grass of Home hitmaker said: “I enjoyed my life in south Wales. I liked going to the local club with my father and his brothers and my cousins in Treforest. I couldn’t wait to be one of them.
“It was a great community to come from. You know, the salt of the earth. Coal mining. That’s what they were. It was a wonderful experience and I wouldn’t change it for the world. There was so much love.”
Tom admits that he had no intention of following his father down the pit because he had his heart set on a music career.
He said: “I never fancied it because I always wanted to be a pop singer.”
Jones also reflected on the decision he made to stop dyeing his hair in 2009 after he was embarrassed by his appearance on the TV show Later… with Jools Holland.
The Delilah singer recalled: “(I thought), ‘My God, my hair, it looks dyed.’
“And it looked permed!
“And people were saying, ‘Tom Jones with his dyed, permed hair.’
Tom was shocked when “nobody complained” when he allowed his locks to go grey.
He explained: “Everybody said, ‘Your hair looks great, Tom.’
“I said, ‘Thank you very much.'”
Sir Tom Jones: My dad worked down the coal mines after I found fame
