When Sir Tom Jones struck gold in 1965 with his first number one, It’s Not Unusual, his father was still working down the coal mines of the Rhondda Valley.
Known as “the miner’s son from Pontypridd”, Jones’s life had moved far from the working men’s clubs where he first learned to perform.
By his mid-20s, Jones had signed a three-record deal with Decca Studios, sharing a label with The Rolling Stones and cutting his first string of hits.
But the pop star said he never lost sight of home. Appearing in the BBC series, In My Own Words, he revealed the anguish he felt knowing his father was still down the pit while his own life was being transformed by fame.
The episode is filmed at the first home he bought with his late wife, Linda, in 1966 following his first wave of success.
Manygate Lane, in Shepperton, Surrey, is 150 miles from Pontypridd, and, at the time, was an estate home to a number of celebrities, but Jones remained grounded in his Welsh roots.
“I had a new Jaguar, I had a new house, and I went back to Wales, because I would go back whenever I could,” he recalled.
“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.”
Jones eventually gave the Manygate Lane house to his parents but the move did not suit his father, who would sometimes become depressed and be unable to get out of bed.
“Everything they knew was in Pontypridd.”
Growing up in Pontypridd, Sir Tom’s childhood was filled with love and community.
“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.”
Though his father worked in the mines, and lots of Welsh boys followed in their father’s footsteps as they left school, the 85-year-old said: “I never fancied it because I always wanted to be a pop singer.”
