Tom Jones has recorded hundreds of songs since the 1960s, from “It’s Not Unusual” to “Delilah” to “She’s a Lady.” But when he was asked in a 2013 interview to name his favorite of all his own records, he did not pick one of those. He picked “I’ll Never Fall in Love Again,” a song he cut in 1967 in a single take, with just one acetate copy to show for it. That copy went home to his wife, Linda.
A song he heard as a teenager in Wales
The roots of the song go back to Tom’s teenage years in Treforest, near Pontypridd in South Wales. At the Wood Road club, the workingmen’s club where he sang his first paid gig at 17 and went home with one pound, he used to hear an old Depression-era song about a man who could not stop wandering because he could not find work.
Years later, after “It’s Not Unusual” had made him famous, Tom found himself on tour with Lonnie Donegan, the Glasgow-born “King of Skiffle” whose records had inspired a generation of British teenagers, including the young Beatles, to pick up guitars. Donegan told him he had a song Tom should hear.
When Donegan played it, Tom recognized the melody at once. Donegan and his co-writer Jimmy Currie had taken that same old wandering song, changed words in the verses, added a new chorus and turned it into a song about a man who has been betrayed in love. Donegan had released it himself in 1962, and it failed to chart. He told Tom, in much saltier language, that Tom could sing it like nobody else. Tom later said he loved the song so much he wished he had written it, and that he marveled at how cleverly Donegan had reworked the old tune.
One take, one acetate
Tom wanted his version to sound nothing like Donegan’s. Arranger Charles Blackwell built a new backing for it, taking his cue from Ketty Lester’s 1962 hit “Love Letters.” Producer Peter Sullivan ran the session for Decca.
Tom sang it through once. According to his own account, that first take was the one. The studio cut a single acetate, the one-off disc used to hear a recording before it is pressed for release, and Tom took it home.
He handed it to Linda, the girl from Pontypridd he had married in 1957, when they were both still teenagers. Linda then carried the acetate to the house of Tom’s manager, Gordon Mills, and played it for Mills’s wife. Before long, the two women were arguing over who got to keep the only copy. Tom later said that was the moment he knew he had a hit on his hands.
“I’ve got my wife and my manager’s wife fighting over it.”
The charts, on both sides of the Atlantic
Decca released the single in the summer of 1967, and it climbed to No. 2 in Britain. It also opened his album 13 Smash Hits, which spent 49 weeks on the UK albums chart.
In America, the first release stalled at No. 49. Two years later, with Tom now a fixture on American television through his own ABC series, the record was reissued in 1969. This time it reached No. 6 on the Billboard Hot 100 and went all the way to No. 1 on the adult contemporary chart. Elvis Presley later recorded the song as well, in 1976.
The two people tied to that acetate
Lonnie Donegan died on November 3, 2002, at the age of 71. Linda died in April 2016 after a short battle with lung cancer. She and Tom had been married for 59 years.
The night Lonnie’s son walked onstage
On January 5, 2019, a singer named Peter Donegan auditioned for The Voice UK with “Bless the Broken Road,” the country song first recorded by the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band and later a No. 1 hit for Rascal Flatts. Tom was the only one of the four coaches to turn his chair.
When Peter gave his name, Tom asked whether he was any relation to Lonnie. Peter told him he was Lonnie’s son. Peter had toured with his father as his pianist from the age of 18.
Tom told the audience that he and Lonnie had been friends and had toured together, and that Lonnie had written a song for him. He asked Peter if he knew it. Within moments, Peter was at the piano playing his father’s song, and Tom was singing it beside him, with nothing but the piano behind them. Peter joined Tom’s team that night.
Afterward, Tom said he could hardly believe it, and added that it was a song he still did in his act.
Still on the road
Tom Jones is 86 now. He spent this fall touring North America, more than 60 years after “It’s Not Unusual” and nearly six decades after that single take. The man who wrote the song is gone, and so is the woman he handed that one acetate to. The record he calls his favorite is still his.