Tom Jones International

In a pretty technical interview on NPR’s Fresh Air with Terry Gross, Melissa Cross, a vocal coach who works with a lot with heavy metal singers teaching them how to scream without damaging their voices and author of The Zen of Screaming, was asked if she is able watch a performance like any other audience member and not critique it like a professional voice teacher.

Cross replied, “There are some singers that actually have allowed me to transcend everything. I can go there. I can be transported. If it’s really good I won’t be technical-minded because I’ll be in so much awe of the feelings I’m getting from the performance. I can be transported.”

Asked then to list her favorites, she mentioned Pavarotti, Renée Fleming and some other opera singers.

Opera singers taken care of, she added, “I like Tom Jones. His voice is amazing. I don’t like his material at all. But I think he has the most amazing voice — I mean, one of the most amazing voices of all time. The guy has the most….I mean, the *overtone in that guy’s voice is unreal, unreal. He sings a C above middle C and it sounds like middle C because of the strength and the overtone in it.”

Here she paused then added with a laugh, “I want to meet Tom Jones.”

The interview aired December 8, 2005 on NPR’s Fresh Air With Terry Gross and you can listen to it.

For the record, Cross’ favorite singer is Chris Cornell, formerly of Soundgarden; now of Audioslave.

(*Didn’t know what “overtone” means, so I looked it up: “Overtone singing is a technique with which a single human voice can simultaneously produce two or more clearly audible tones.” In fact, I didn’t really understand the technical stuff at all, but I liked what I did understand — Ellen)

Thanks, Leslie, for tellling us about this.

You can listen to an interview with Tom on the same program from December 10, 2003.