Sir Tom is one of the more fascinating case studies in pop,
principally because while the first half of his career saw him acting out the
personification of pop’s most forthright “real man” beefcake fantasia, the
second half has witnessed him subtly undermining it. Perhaps the American
success of “She’s A Lady” – a far bigger hit there than it was in Britain,
where he made number two in the same year with a singularly different perspective on what “Tom Jones” meant – was down to his being viewed as a
slightly more readily available Elvis. As much as he, and some of his
musicians, try to rock out, however, he is let down by the foursquare big band
arrangement and Neanderthal lyrical sentiments which were subsequently deemed irredeemably
chauvinistic by the song’s author, Paul Anka. The moral here is that, however
modernistic something from even half a century ago can still sound, there are
elements which render the work as though it might have been composed half a
millennium ago.
Date Record Made
Number Two: 20 March 1971
Number Of Weeks At
Number Two: 1
Record At Number One: “Me
And Bobby McGee” by Janis Joplin
UK Chart Position: 13
Other Information:
There is the notion that Jimmy Page plays guitar on “She’s A Lady” but Page
himself says it wasn’t him, and is probably right; I would expect that in early
1971 he would have been so busy working with Led Zeppelin, and to a lesser extent Roy
Harper, that he simply didn’t have time for any session work (although he
certainly played on several of Jones’ sixties hits). Logic suggests that this
was almost certainly the work of the singer’s regular guitarist, Big Jim
Sullivan.
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