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Christie’s To Auction A 1962 Tom Jones Demo Tape On July 10
Thursday, June 19th, 2008
On July 10, Christie’s in South Kensington (London) is having a “POPULAR CULTURE: ROCK & POP MEMORABILIA” auction. Among the items is Lot 109, described as, “A rare ¼ inch reel-to-reel master-tape recording of Tom Jones, 1962, on one reel of Emitape, featuring four un-released tracks, tracks comprise:
1.Don’t Pretend
2.Time Alone
3.What About Me
4.That’s What Love Can Do
the box inscribed with track details in an unknown hand.”
The Christie’s online catalog contains a full explanation of Lot 109, with a pre-auction estimate of £2,000 to £3,000. The four songs were recorded, it says — quoting as a source the unauthorized bio Tom Jones: Up Close — in the men’s football changing room (bathroom) in the Pontypridd YMCA during the time Tom (”Tommy Scott”) and The Senators (who were later briefly known as The Playboys and then The Squires) were being managed by Myron and Byron. You can bid for the lot online.
Anyway, we first heard about this auction when Dale, a UK TJ fan, emailed us suggesting we listen to the Chris Evans Show on BBC 2. For part of the show he is interviewing a woman from Christie’s and, at 26:47 into the interview he talks about the Tom Jones demo tape. You can skip to that part of the interview by using the fast forward arrow at the top left of the player.
(To listen to BBC’s Radio Player you need to have RealPlayer installed. If you don’t have it, you can download it here. If you have a pop-up blocker installed, just click on “launch BBC iPlayer” when you get to the BBC page.)
As he finishes talking about the demo tape, Evans plays a short clip from one song. It’s called Don’t Pretend. If you wish you can listen to the full demo.
Our Fine Print — A Note About This Auction: We have copies of all four of these songs, clearly recorded onto a CD from records made from the demo tapes or from acetates, the test recordings made from master tapes before the record is produced. These recordings, like the one above, are complete with all of that terrific record-like ambient noise. The source material the auction house quotes — that book by Ellis and Sutherland — lists only songs that were done at that session by The Senators (”in a portable recording studio”), not by Tom Jones. The songs on the demo tape being auctioned aren’t mentioned at all in this source material but, of course, the source material may be incorrect about this as it is about so much. (It is a deeply terrible book, unoriginal and very badly written.)
We also want to tell you that someone we know paid a few hundred pounds on eBay for acetate recordings of these songs and he is not the person who gave us the demos on CD. So, obviously, these particular tracks are available if you look hard enough. Thus the price estimate of £2,000 to £3,000 seems a bit steep although, if you are insistent on the original, it may be right. If it is the original. But we do like the vintage photo Christie’s used, don’t you?
from amazon.com. Ships worldwide Nov. 25!
June 19th, 2008 at 9:32 am
Vintage photo is gorgeous and much appreciated!!!
June 19th, 2008 at 11:29 am
I listened to the demo and was amazed that TJ had his deep, rich, powerful voice even at that young age…even though the song sucked.
June 19th, 2008 at 3:20 pm
I have copies of these demos that I will provide to anyone for free; except for the postage and handling costs.
June 19th, 2008 at 5:00 pm
Thanks, Tom. If anyone’s interested please drop a line to ellen@tomjonesinternational.com and we’ll pass it on to Tom (Tom Terry, that is).
June 20th, 2008 at 1:58 am
How fantastic. I’m robbing the bank now.
June 23rd, 2008 at 6:02 am
Very interesting, rare and romantic…Are these songs covered or original?? ..Who is the songwriter?
June 29th, 2008 at 12:09 am
[...] For our original post about the auction, click here. [...]