1966 Tom Jones: Green Green Grass Of Home

And to round off the year, I'm going to complete a trilogy of childhood reminisces by saying that as a boy, I'd always taken Tom's Welsh background and my knowledge of the film 'How Green Was My Valley' to mean that 'Green Green Grass Of Home' was somehow autobiographical, or at least written to order. It's not of course, it's a much covered Curly Putman country song that comes complete with Putman's trademark schlock emotional overkill that Tom grabs with both hands.

Opening in a mode of warm nostalgia, Tom leads us around the sights of his hometown after a period of absence with the pride and self satisfaction of one who's come home for Christmas. But by verse three the rug is pulled - this has all been a dream and Tom is in fact sitting on death row waiting to be executed when the sun comes up; the only green grass of home he's going to see again is from the other side when they bury him under it.

It's a dubious premise to generate sympathy from and the cheap trick is made cheaper by Tom's bombastic diction that deep fries the song in ham. To get the listener onside in all of this it's wise to mine a little sympathy from the lyric, but Jones' wounded bull bellow shatters any fragility into china shop shards so that when the spoken revelation comes, we feel cheated by his cocksure bluster ("Then ah AWAKE and look around me, at FOUR GRAY WALLS that surround me, and ah realise, that ah, was, only, dreaming")

I'm probably being a tad harsh here though - Tom does what Tom does and to expect anything less is like asking an angry dog to bark quietly. But 'Green Green Grass Of Home' is country mawk at its most mawkish, no matter who's on vocal duties. It's an ace of hearts cynical slice of surface deep exploitation with no regard to subtext morality (just what unspecified crime is he being executed for?) and the whole package makes for a very curious Christmas number one.