Jack White to Collaborate with Tom Jones

Jack White and Tom Jones plan to collaborate.

Jordan Strauss/Jon Furniss/Getty

The latest collaborator in Jack White's unusual arsenal? None other than Tom Jones, the contemporary Welsh crooner behind such pop hits as "It's Not Unusual."

Jones will join White's Third Man Records in its "Blue Series," which has pressed special one-off 7-inch singles from Insane Clown Posse, Stephen Colbert and other guest artists. Jones rerecorded “Jezebel,” a track from his 2002 album Mr. Jones, and also tackled the blues great Howlin’ Wolf with a cover of “Evil.”

A release date for his "Blue Sessions" disc has not been announced, but the sessions went well; White reportedly said of the 71-year-old pop icon, "He impressed the shit out of everybody."

Meanwhile, White's Third Man has also reached a business deal with Document Records to reissue the blues label's albums on deluxe vinyl. The first release will be a compilation featuring early 20th-century blues musicians Charlie Patton, Blind Willie McTell and others.

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Song Stories

“Piano Man”

Billy Joel | 1973

Billy Joel’s first hit, “Piano Man,” was – ironically – an autobiographical lament about how his first album wasn’t a hit. When Cold Spring Harbor didn’t take off, Joel briefly became a lounge pianist in Los Angeles, and this song, about that experience, expressed his frustrations and fears at the time: “And they sit at the bar and put bread in my jar/And say, ‘Man, what are you doing here?’” “It was all right,” Joel said later, about the gig. “I got free drinks and union scale, which was the first steady money I’d made in a long time.”

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