Tommy James seems to have been the inspiration for Mick Jagger in his singing style. Do you agree that James was the original?

No...

Hanky Panky, which was Tommy James's FIRST hit, entered the U.S. charts on June 4, 1966. The Stones already had a GREATEST HITS album out by then!



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 2010-03-04 02:01 by tatters.

LOVE Tommy and the Shondells. Crimson and Clover - Sweet Cherry Wine - Crystal Blue Persuasion - Draggin' The Line - Tighter, Tighter - Loved One - Ball Of Fire - etc. = Great stuff



But see no influence on Mick at all.

Great track - used on the sountrack to the film "May"

First of all, my answer to the question of the original poster is no. But...I also really love Tommy James. Just finished his new book called "Me, the Mob and the Music" which I would highly recommend. It doesn't go really deep into details (225 pages), but enough that you get pretty much the entire story of Tommy James and the Shondells. And the Mob. By the way he's still rockin. There are videos on YouTube of a 2005 gig and his voice sounds remarkably similar to all those great records of the sixties.

It seems that all Tommy James hits are memorable ones. I think everyone has some kind of memory or story to go with one of his songs. They all had a catchy beat or dizzy sound.

I would consider his band probably one of the most underrated ever.

No comparison at all to the Stones.

Jagger may well have been a major inspiration for Tommy James.

Mony Mony used to be in my all time top 10 (30 years ago). Great stuff.

Yeah, I knew those details but thanks for reminding me.

"Tighter, Tighter" maybe my all time favorite song. Tommy does perform it live though.

"Three Times In Love" - his last US hit?

Positively LOVE Tommy James & the Shondells - Crimson & Clover is still my all-time favorite song to this day!!

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Elmo Lewis
Yeah, I knew those details but thanks for reminding me.

"Tighter, Tighter" maybe my all time favorite song. Tommy does perform it live though.

"Three Times In Love" - his last US hit?

I don't even remember that one.

I missed a club show Tommy did in LA around '75 or '76, but according to the review in Phonograph Record Magazine only a handful of people--less than 20--were in attendance. (This is only a couple of years after 1971's "Draggin' The Line. Talk about a tough business...) The reviewer gave Tommy points for being a class act, because at the end of the show Tommy went up to everyone and personally thanked them for showing up.

Being a Top-40 AM radio act, Tommy James and the Shondells didn't have the staying power of the more seriously regarded FM radio (now called "Classic Rock" ) artists, who could coast for decades on one famous album. But they were really, really good and tragically underestimated.

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VoodooLounge13
Positively LOVE Tommy James & the Shondells - Crimson & Clover is still my all-time favorite song to this day!!

it's in my all-timer list...

Mind you the album version, although the single version's good, too, but ya gotta have that whacked out guitar solo in there!!

I saw Tommy James in NJ back in the early 70's. I was stoned out of my mind and the music was awesome.
The guy liked to experiment

Where is TJ now? used to love that Mony Mony..

I always forget they did "I think we're alone now". That was a good one. But not the horrible cover by Tiffany.

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duke richardson
Where is TJ now? used to love that Mony Mony..

Playing a show on May 7th in Glenside, PA......

yeah looked at the site...is Glenside a suburb of Philly? I used to live in Center city... many years ago

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jjflash73
I saw Tommy James in NJ back in the early 70's. I was stoned out of my mind and the music was awesome.
The guy liked to experiment

James played all the instruments except drums on C&C. One of my favorite singles artists.

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71Tele

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jjflash73
I saw Tommy James in NJ back in the early 70's. I was stoned out of my mind and the music was awesome.
The guy liked to experiment

James played all the instruments except drums on C&C.

By Tommy James and A Shondell, then?

[www.tommyjames.com]

Website with 2010 tour dates - maybe that will influence Mick.

Nice site - checkout the store. T-shirts, 2fer CD's, autographed pictures, etc. - maybe that will influence Mick.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 2010-03-04 20:22 by Elmo Lewis.

Three Times In Love - a mid-tempo acoustic song - not a classic, but not bad at all. About 1979.

I saw him with Chubby Checker in downtown Buffalo after a baseball game. They rolled out a stage on the field after the game and played away. Tommy James was headliner billed as Tommy James and the Shondells.

I have this memory of him with long blonde hair and white shoes. That puffy hair like the hair bands of the 80's.

Mick most liekly inspired Tommy James. The Shondells were really good. i love Crimsson and Clover and Crystal Blue Persuasion. Draggin' the Line I heard yesterday for the first time in years another great song!

His later albums Tommy James and Christian Of The World are both excellent psych pop.

Tommy James' version was recorded in Feb. 1964 at a local radio station, WNIL in Niles, Michigan, and released on the local label, Snap Records and sold well in the tri-state area of Michigan, Indiana and Illinois. However, lacking national distribution, the song quickly disappeared. James moved on, breaking up the Shondells, and finishing high school.

In late 1965, a Pittsburgh DJ started playing the two-year-old single and touted it as an "exclusive." Another Pittsburgh DJ played HIS copy of "Hanky Panky" at various dance parties and the resulting demand caused a "Hanky Panky" war as bootleggers sold an estimated 80,000 illegal copies of the record. DJ "Mad Mike" Metro called Tommy to inform him of the single's popularity and asked if the Shondells could perform it in Pittsburgh. When he arrived in Pittsburgh, he asked a local band, the Raconteurs, if they would like to be the new Shondells. They accepted the offer and he adopted the new stage name of Tommy James.

Record companies took notice and lined up to sign the band. Atlantic, Columbia, Epic and Kama Sutra all courted them along with a smaller label called Roulette. But, as Tommy told us, things didn't go as expected: "One by one all the record companies started calling up and saying, 'Look, we gotta pass.' I said, 'What? What are you talking about?' 'Sorry, we take back our offer. We can't…' There was about six of them in a row. And so we didn't know what in the world was going on. And finally Jerry Wexler over at Atlantic leveled with us and said, Look, Mob Boss Morris Levy called up all the other record companies and said, 'This is my freakin' record.' And scared 'em all away – even the big corporate labels. And so that should have been the dead giveaway right there." The band did sign with Roulette and did a great job promoting the record, which hit #1 in the summer of 1966. Tommy James was 19 years old and a year out of high school.

After making appearances on TV and clubs in the city, he took a master of "Hanky Panky" to New York. "The amazing thing is we did not re-record the song," James told Bronson, "I don't think anybody can record a song that bad and make it sound good. It had to sound amateurish like that. I think if we'd fooled with it too much we'd have fouled it up." It was released promptly and took the top position of the U.S. Billboard Hot 100 for two weeks in July 1966.



Edited 6 time(s). Last edit at 2010-03-06 15:14 by mitchflorida.

Am I the only person who noticed how the two guys behind Tommy James in the video keep on bumping into each other as they sway back and forth?



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 2010-03-06 15:11 by mitchflorida.

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ryanpow
I always forget they did "I think we're alone now". That was a good one. But not the horrible cover by Tiffany.

My favorite Tommy James trivia tidbit. This most likely will never be duplicated. In the fall of 1987, back to back #1 US hits were "Mony Mony" by Billy Idol, followed by "I Think We're Alone Now" by Tiffany. Neither of them knew that the other was releasing a Tommy James cover. It's part fluke and part testimony of TJ's great music.