Tom Jones Deserves Your Respect

TO OPEN HIS 2012 album Spirit in the Room, Tom Jones dug into the Leonard Cohen songbook. "I was born like this, I had no choice," he sings, "I was born with the gift of a golden voice." When Cohen sang that song live, it always got a chuckle from the audience, even though it was true: not all gold is polished and shiny, after all. In Jones's case, it's a simple acknowledgment of a gift. Not that he's always used that gift wisely. There've been times over the course of his career when Tom Jones went overboard with the beltiness, and used his powerful vocal cords like they were muscles to flex. That's one reason why when you say "Tom Jones", you have to qualify it with reams of footnotes. Which Tom Jones?