On August 9, 2016, at Glasgow’s open-air Kelvingrove Bandstand, Tom Jones sang “Tomorrow Night” in memory of his wife, Linda. The Guardian’s Malcolm Jack noted the dedication in his review the next day. The ballad was the next-to-last track on Long Lost Suitcase, released the previous year. As Jones would explain a month later, it was also the track Linda had loved most.
Jones had wanted to record the ballad long before that concert. In a December 2015 interview with The Philadelphia Inquirer, he said he’d always loved the Lonnie Johnson version, but the song hadn’t fit what he was doing before. Long Lost Suitcase gave him a place for it. He and producer Ethan Johns were drawing on blues, country, and gospel, with Jones singing live alongside the musicians in the studio.
Linda listened to everything Jones recorded and gave him her honest opinion. When he played her “Tomorrow Night,” she told him, “I love that.” They’d been married 59 years when she died on April 10, 2016. After her death, Jones wondered whether he’d be able to sing the song she’d singled out.
That September, The Washington Post asked Jones whether losing Linda had changed his approach to music. He answered by talking about “Tomorrow Night.” It meant more to him than it had when he recorded it, he said. The words mattered to him, and so did knowing how much Linda had loved the song. By October, he told the Los Angeles Times he was introducing it at shows by telling the audience his late wife had loved it.
“I find pleasure in it because it reminds me of her.”