Tom Jones ~~ Please Release Me

The son of coal miner Thomas Woodward (died 5 October 1981), and Freda Jones (died 7 February 2003, of cancer), Jones began singing at an early age. Biographies explain his birth name is actually Thomas John, not Thomas Jones-- Jones himself complicated the issue later in life by claiming to have been born Thomas Jones Woodward. He'd regularly sing at family gatherings and weddings, and also sang in his school choir. He was struck down by tuberculosis and bedridden for almost a year. It was a critical time for him, but he could do little else but listen to music and draw. At the age of 16, Jones married Linda Trenchard on March 2, 1957 and had a son named Mark, long before becoming a pop idol. Jones quit school with no qualifications and took a variety of jobs including a builder's laborer and a door-to-door vacuum cleaner salesman.

In 1974, Jones moved to the United States, buying the mansion formerly belonging to Dean Martin in Bel-Air, Los Angeles.

The singer was awarded an OBE in 1999 and a Knight Bachelor in the 2006 New Years Honors list for his services to music, and was subsequently knighted by Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II at Buckingham Palace, London on March 29, 2006.

"Green Green Grass of Home" (1966), his most successful single.