#7- I (Who Have Nothing)- Tom Jones
I already owned a couple of Tom Jones albums when I (Who Have Nothing) was released in 1970. The album had 2 singles that made the charts (The title song and Daughter of Darkness), and in retrospect, contain a number of tunes that are now regarded as classics, notably The Bee Gee’s “To Love Somebody” John Fogerty’s “Lodi”, Ray Charles “I Can’t Stop Loving You”, Burt Bacharach’s “What The World Needs Now”, Rodgers and Hammerstein’s “I Have Dreamed” and the definitive song from the Great Depression era “Brother Can You Spare a Dime”. This album had the effect of broadening my musical taste, but that is not why I love it.
Save cigarette smoking, there is no one interest of mine that received as much ridicule from friends and acquaintances as my passion for the music of Tom Jones. During my early years in Livermore (ages 11-15), my sister Cindy was merciless in her criticism. Her opinion was heartily shared by most people our age. To the average adolescent/ preadolescent in Livermore in the 1970’s there was nothing cool about Tom Jones.
Coincidentally, at that time there was nothing cool about me either. I was late to puberty and my body was far behind my love for sports. I was a late pick in pick-up games with the boys and off the list of first boyfriend candidates with the girls. I had been in a couple of school plays in junior high, but they did little to improve my social standing. I entered high school 5”1” and 150 pounds. Bill Whalen had nicknamed me steamboat, fire hydrant would have been equally appropriate. I had an identity, but not a lot of confidence in it.
I took a drama class the first semester of my freshman year because despite the lack of recognition, I knew I did that well. One of our first assignments was to lip-sync a song. Those of you who remember me from that time will recall that I was an antagonist. One by one students went up to perform their songs and one by one I let them know their flaws during the review session that followed. “Why would you pull a flute out of mid-air?” was one of my criticisms. Near the end of the exercise came my turn. I remember Ms. Williams, the teacher saying “We’ve been waiting for this” when I walked to the record player. So was I. It was me and Tom Jones, “the Voice”, about to express the pain of “I (Who Have Nothing”). I was the only one in the room who expected the result. When I finished, 30 people who wanted to tear me apart, stood up and clapped.
That moment was watershed for me because I had confirmed evidence that I could trust myself. It didn’t matter that I was short, or that I had the interests of a kid raised in an ethnic blue-collar neighborhood in Chicago. At that moment I knew that when I was good, I was good anywhere. Ultimately, that self-confidence made me a better friend, a better worker, a better father. Tom Jones affected my life.
