September's Music and Essay: "Thunderball", Tom Jones, Sex and Schmaltz

I have just posted 4 of my own, original songs at
http://www.myspace.com/losttrain

Below are links to the music accompanying this article.
http://www.hughhales-tooke.com/music/thunderball
http://www.hughhales-tooke.com/music/thelookoflove.mp3
http://www.hughhales-tooke.com/music/auprivave.mp3

Even as a small boy, when I first heard the strains of ‘What’s New Pussycat’ or ‘It’s Not Unusual’, I knew that Tom Jones was ‘schmaltz’, which, coming to think of it, must make schmaltz the first Yiddish word that I ever encountered. The Oxford English Dictionary explains that it is “from German Schmaltz ‘dripping lard” meaning “sentmentality,esp.in music, drama etc”, but for me the definition was broader, it was more like the aural equivalent of kitsch (a word I didn’t hear until much later), meaning, the OED agrees, ‘garish, tasteless or sentimental’.

All of the pop music of the pre Beatles era sounded like schmaltz to me: crooners such as Frank Sinatra, Tony Bennett and Andy Williams; the movie Elvis; and Broadway show-tunes in particular. It used to induce a quasi-physical reaction in me. Tom Jones and Engleburt Humperdink - the stars over whose attributes giant ladies hanging out the laundry used to argue – were, in my view, the continuation of this nauseating schmaltzy tradition. Hugely popular, they were far more topical and hence more present and vivid than their forebears, but although they came to popularity amidst the Beatles, Stones, Who and Kinks, they never seemed to be of that generation of pop groups, but emerged from some timeless, showbiz limbo.

Although I had a visceral dislike of his music, forty years on, I have to admit that, with the exception of the Beatles, Tom Jones had as much of impact on my life as any of any of the pop groups of the time. Well before I knew that this bit went into that bit, through close quarters observation of the aforementioned big ladies hanging out the laundry, and the nudge, nudge, wink, wink that went along with any mention of his name, I deduced that Tom Jones had to with whatever it was that men and women (although very definitely not my parents) got up to behind closed doors. He was, I realized, the paragon of male allure - and I am not sure I have ever recovered from this discovery.

It is fitting that Tom Jones should have recorded the theme song to the film, ‘Thunderball’. Sean Connery, who played James Bond, was a film star who, like Tom Jones, had what was referred to on TV at the time, as ‘sex-appeal’, and although I greatly preferred James Bond, it seemed to me that they were both operating in the similar territory (in a world populated by voluptuous women) - you could tell from the similarities in their manly accouterments. They shared the same manly, hairy chest, gold wristwatch, driving-glove aesthetic. They both also caused an extreme reaction in women. After only the most fleeting contact they were either frenzied in their excitement (Tom Jones), or rendered as docile as a sleepwalker (James Bond).

Tom Jones and the Bond films shared a streak of self-mockery. On the topic of his sex appeal, Tom Jones has always been self-deprecating - without denying that he has it.

“I just pump up the tires,” he remarked, implanting an image in mind from which I will, most probably, never be free, “and the husbands get to ride the bike home.”

Increasingly, the Bond films were peppered with absurd innuendos, most obviously in the names of the female characters (Pussy Galore) and the quips – mid-action - seemed to acknowledge the improbability of what was going on, but remarkably, despite all this, Sean Connery made Bond credible – an essential ingredient in being a sex symbol.

The Tom Jones/James Bond pairing fits in other ways too. The Bond themes songs, like Tom Jones, were a throwback to the previous generation. Bond was emphatically not American and yet the theme songs were more reminiscent of the kind of American, big band arrangement of the Rat Pack era rather than British pop of the Nineteen-Sixties. Early on in the decade a crooner singing ‘From Russia With Love’ didn’t seem anachronistic, but well after the Beatles had become superstars Shirley Bassey continued in the same showbiz vein with ‘Goldfinger’. The arrangement for ‘Thunderball’ follows suit.

Unlike his pop band contemporaries, who were writing their own songs, Tom Jones was still working in the showbiz world of the professional songsmith – and he was at their mercy. After scanning the words to ‘Thunderball’ Tom Jones famously asked, “What the bloody hell is it anyway?”

That ‘She Loves You’ was formulaic was evident to anyone with hearing, but it sounded fresh, and authentic, whereas Tom Jones’ sang material redolent of the airless world of songs written in cubicles by professional songwriters.

Even to a six-year-old the work of career songwriters such as ‘My Favorite Things’ from the ‘Sound of Music’ reeked of phoniness. Who, apart from an effete lyricist, gets cheered up by the thought of ‘brown paper packages tied up with string’? But you didn’t even have to think about what the words meant. It is remarkable how much of is transmitted through the sound of a song alone. Show-tunes sounded fake.

From the first moment I heard the sound of Frank Sinatra, and before knowing anything about him, I reacted to the almost violent swagger in his voice. More mature consideration only confirmed this. The horror of the showbiz worldview – the ‘Ugly American’ tourist of the Nineteen-Fifties traveling business class – is vividly encapsulated by the words of ‘Come Fly With Me’.

Come fly with me come fly let’s fly away
If you can use some exotic booze, there’s a bar in far Bombay

(And how about ‘weather-wise it’s such a lovely day’ for redundancy and inelegance)

Before the Sixties, being a performer – showbiz – wasn’t about presenting an authentic version of your self (your views, your life) to the world. Tom Jones had far more in common with Frank Sinatra in this respect than the Beatles, or, more to the point, Otis Redding. That Tom Jones had ability as a singer was undeniable, and even the way in which he sang has a lot in common with the R&B singers emerging in the Sixties, but he was always a performer. Even if Otis Redding didn’t write the song he was singing, the words coming out of his mouth sounded like they might have been his own. This notion of authenticity became central not just to R&B (what is ‘Soul’ otherwise?) but to pop music of all kinds.

When did I begin to change my opinion about some of the above, and reconcile myself with Tom Jones? Comparatively recently although it’s been years since Sixties pop groups have sounded fresh and immediate. There has been plenty of time in which to have grown tired of the same musical clichés repeated over and over, for the pop star schtick to have become wearisome and for the artificiality and the posturing to have become at least as absurd looking as anything from the showbiz tradition. In fact, currently popular music of all types – Bono and good causes aside - is little more than a continuation of that show-biz entertainment tradition.

In time, the words, not just to ‘She Loves You’ and ‘I Want to Hold Your Hand’ by the Beatles, but to hits like ‘Satisfaction’ by the Rolling Stones, and ‘All Day and All of The Night’ by the Kinks, seem as limited in outlook – and more juvenile - than any Frank Sinatra song you care to mention. In comparison, the words to a Broadway show-tune such as ‘Somewhere’ have come to seem sharp, tough and worldly. It is more dimensional in other ways too. The way that the music in ‘Somewhere’ reflects the subject of the song is masterful. The aspiration and the desire to escape is expressed in the lyrics is also conveyed by the leap (of a Minor Seventh) between the first two words, ‘There’s a’ (place for us).

There is still a place in my heart for a group such as the Kinks. They never sound livelier than when played directly after lounge music. Their songs are a great musical antidote to the over-sweet, indeterminate sound of a jazz guitar, using chords that are so harmonically complex that they seem to lead everywhere and nowhere. The problem is that, by now, there are hundreds of songs that depend on the same simple structures pioneered by the Kinks and their ilk, and even the originals, let alone all those that have followed, have come to sound extremely predictable.

A classic show tune such as ‘I got Rhythm’ by George and Ira Gershwin follows a much less predictable pattern. Along with Irving Berlin and Hoagey Carmichael, to name a few, these songwriters the tools enabling songs to take unexpected turns, and to find indirect ways of leading up to the catchy choruses.

Show-tunes and songs in the showbiz tradition tend to make use of a wider variety of chords - although these jazz chords are often far from sweet. It occurred to me recently that rock songs have a raw power and energy often related to sheer volume whereas jazz is raw through dissonance (and speed, as in the example of the Charlie Parker tune linked to this essay). Even at low volume Charlie Parker's be-bop recordings are not ‘easy listening’ and experimental Jazz has only got more abrasive since.

In addition to the Dominant Sevenths that are ubiquitous to all music (including the most basic pop as well blues progressions) jazz makes use of a big variety of dissonant chords of that type: Seventh chords that are tweaked by dickering around with the component notes of the chord (sharpened flattened or sharpened Fifths) or those with added notes on top - which is how you arrive at Ninths, Elevenths and Thirteenths chords. All of these chords are members of the same family, with the same function, but create different shadings of dissonance.

You don’t have to dig too deep beneath the surface of even a Burt Bacharach song, someone who has made a career of saccharine sweet jazz inflected pop tunes, (in fact you only have to strip away the vocals) and at times you will hear a surprisingly dissonant chord in the accompaniment. One chord in the ‘Look of Love’ was so stridently dissonant, and such a departure from my understanding of harmony, that I kept checking and rechecking the sheet music to see that I had got it right (there is a link to my piano transcription of the song at the top of the essay). Played at stadium volume it would enough to make even the most die-hard thrash metal fan wince.

Two of my favorite songs in my Tom Jones greatest hits collection, ‘Once There was a Time’ and ‘With These Hands’ are songs in the same jazz inflected pop vein – showbiz arrangements that make use of comparatively complex chord changes. ‘With These hands’ even feature the classic key change mid song, allowing Tom Jones to up the ante in his vocal performance. It’s a cliché in the barnstorming tradition. From my current perspective, making a distinction between Tom Jones for this kind of showmanship and any number of R&B singers (including Otis Redding) for using the same tricks has come to seem like inverse-discrimination.

Had I been old enough to be more conscious of soul music in the Sixties, I dare say I would have dismissed Tom Jones as an ersatz version of the real thing, but I might have been quicker to see the obvious showmanship in the performances of even the most soulful singers who came to fame in the Nineteen-Sixties and the continuity with the showbiz tradition – well before the lapse of greats such as Aretha Franklin into her own brand of vapid showbiz limbo.

That Tom Jones, unlike any number of pop stars, has never taken himself too seriously (much less harbored any messianic tendencies), encouraged me to view him more kindly in recent years, influencing my perception (and enjoyment) of his material. If not pathos, there is much more warmth and humanity to what he does than I ever gave him credit for. I used to hate ‘It’s Not Unusual’. The words sounded so much like the product of professional songwriters, and the arrangement sounded so schmaltzy, but these days this isn’t my salient impression. It’s sounds genuinely joyful - a romp - just a young man at the top of his game having a blast.

As the ‘Thunderball’ story illustrates, Tom Jones knew daft lyrics when he saw them, but I have come to think that his commitment to a song is a testament to him as a performer and not simply cheap showbiz chicanery. He transforms the extremely silly words of ‘Thunderball’, embodying the fantastic attributes of the man described in them, and like Sean Connery in the film, miraculously lends it credibility.

The first line of the song is, ‘he always runs while others walk’, and yet I have never experienced the song as being sung by Tom Jones about somebody else; Tom Jones has always been the protagonist in the song. It is a classic Tom Jones performance, depending both on his considerable chops as a singer and also on his credibility as a sex symbol. Imagine Matt Munro, who sang ‘From Russia With Love’, trying to deliver the song - or even one of the great crooners like Frank Sinatra or Tony Bennett.

The humor implicit in the idea of me singing ‘Thunderball’ was one of the reasons I first considered covering it. When I sing it, I do not inhabit the role of the protagonist in the song. In my version, I am very definitely singing about someone else (this man who ‘strikes like Thunderball’). It seems to me, that simply by my singing the song, the nasty, threatening aspects of the character implicit in the words are brought. In my hands, the man in the song is revealed as in turn: macho, preening, needy, avaricious, fed-up and, evidently, poised to punch you at any moment. If you were shopping around for a life partner, my favorite line, ‘his needs are more so he gives less’ might tip you off that this he is not ideal relationship material.

There was also humor in the idea of translating a massive, brash, big band arrangement to an acoustic guitar, but something similar happened. The implicit darkness of the arrangement - all of the jazzy dissonant chords, such as the one traced by the strings between verses in the original version - seem to be made darker by my playing them on a solo guitar.

I had been trying to master Finger-Style blues guitar playing for a number of years before it occurred to me to work out version of ‘Thunderball’. This technique depends on using the low strings on the guitar to play a bass pattern while you pick around the chords. ‘Thunderball’ just happened to fall under my fingers in a certain way, presenting not just an interesting chord sequence but also a strong bass pattern reminding me of a Bossa Nova. It drew my attention to obvious, which is that the rhythm in the song is altogether more sinuous and sexy than a straight-ahead rock beat.

Working out the song also allowed me to appreciate that the melody and the chords supporting it are not typical, while sounding like they couldn’t be any other way. Under the first line the chords go from A minor to G major, which is very standard for songs in a minor key, but on the second line the chords are B flat major (‘he acts while other men just) and then E major (on ‘talk’), which to my ears (accustomed to years and years of pop/rock music) sounds just a little odd. I hope that this will not be my Epitaph.


If you have found your way to the end of this essay, I would really appreciate you posting a response on my blog, and if you enjoy it or the music, please spread the word to anyone you know who might like it. Many thanks.