Sunday night at Impact, the Welsh crooner will prove yet again he's still got it - and in fact it never went away
"Just call me Tom," says Sir Tom Jones. "I've been Tom for so long, you know."
He's also been singing for a long time.
"I've never known life without singing, really. It's always been there - and my voice has always been pretty big."
And in fact he says this in a big, deep voice, which still harbours that Welsh accent despite years of being based in America.
Landing in the global spot via American television at the tail end of the original British Invasion, Jones toted the influence of 50's rock and roll.
"Elvis Presley, Jerry Lee Lewis, Little Richard, Chuck Berry - that's the music I grew up with. It was the same with the Beatles and the Stones - it's just that they came out a different way to what I was doing.
"Van Morrison and Joe Cocker tell me the same thing. We were basically listening to the same stuff. It's just that when we do it we all sound different."
So is that the real Tom Jones we see onstage?
"Basically, yeah. I don't change much, I just get louder. I don't live at that pace every day, but the Tom Jones you see onstage is like an energy-addicted Tom Jones!"
Energy is conserved more as he gets older, but Jones learned about pacing a long time ago.
"I used to try and open the show with a big number and then try and up it from there, and it was all a bit frantic," he confesses.
Performing is hard work, but he still gets as much out of it as he ever did.
"I feel I enjoy it more now, but it's still a test singing songs like 'Delilah', for instance. You think. 'Wow, it's still coming out!'"
Does he keep in step with the recording and production technology?
"It's still you, a booth and the microphone at the end of the day," he says, and in the shows, "I don't use a lot of production, although we do have big screens now, which we never used to. But you need that so people can see you!"
Asked if he sees himself in any of today's artists, Jones acknowledges a tinge of his flair in Robbie Williams and "a bit of myself in the Kings of Leon".
"But singers should be different - you shouldn't copy other people."
Does that mean who shouldn't look forward to discovering "the next Tom Jones"?
"I don't think any one person is going to be the next me," he says.
Jones used to do two shows a night in theatres and music halls around Britain. "I do about 200 shows a year now, not a world tour every year, but I play all over America and Canada and do a British tour every so often.
"I don't come to this part of the world that much!"
As to keeping fit, Jones says he hits the gym whenever he's in LA - which he adds isn't that often - but, crucially, "My throat doctor says I'm just built right! I have strong vocal chords that just resonate."
Flirting with fame
A clue to Tom Jones' career priorities even when he was still an unknown emerged this week when the 1963 records of a labour exchange in his native south Wales were dusted off.
Officials recommended local lad Thomas Woodward, who'd sampled factory toil and then dumped it, for work that "wouldn't dirty his fingernails".
They decided his love of music was putting him off settling into a proper job, Agence France-Presse reports.
"It would seem that Mr Woodward's little hobby is highly lucrative and this would also account for his non-enthusiasm in securing employment."
The following year he was negotiating a record deal with Decca, but the labour officials were unimpressed: "He is still signing the [unemployment register] and not autograph books."
Jones is currently worth an estimated US$255 million. The labour records concerning him are alone expected to fetch thousands of pounds at an auction next month.
THE USUAL SET- See Tom Jones at Impact Arena in Muang Thong Thani tomorrow at 7.
- Expect to hear "Green, Green Grass of Home", "It's Not Unusual" and "Sex Bomb" as well as "Delilah".
- He's touring with a 10-piece band and arrives here from Malaysia. After Bangkok he'll head to Hong Kong, Singapore, Manila and Seoul.
- Get a seat at www.ThaiTicketMajor.com
