Connie Snedden's musical taste is close to impeccable. Her collection of vinyl LPs and CDs began when her mother gifted her a turntable when she was young. It's now filled with the artists of the last century whose titles rightly included the word "entertainer".
Dean Martin, Elvis Presley (who Connie rates well, if second only to the man himself), Tom Jones.
When Jones toured through Adelaide in 1985, Connie - now in the second half of her 70s - had tickets with her mother, grandmother, and a few others of her extended family. Four generations of her family were there to see the satin-voiced Welsh crooner. She even brought her then-teenage son, Brad, along as an unofficial chaperone.
Brad grew up listening to Tom Jones on the family stereo, and now Connie has inducted her grandson, Archie.
Every Wednesday night, the family gets together for a family dinner to listen to Jones. On Tuesday night, the next three generations were in the crowd at the Newcastle Entertainment Centre, singing along to their favourite songs.
As Connie, Brad and Archie sat on the front stoop chatting about music on Tuesday afternoon, I asked Connie if she had a favourite track. Archie leaned in and whispered to his grandmother confidentially ("Say Sex Bomb!").
"Probably, Sex Bomb," Connie said with a smile before she and her grandson burst into the chorus in unison.
Brad remembers that night in Adelaide almost 40 years ago-the bombardment of women's underclothes tossed onto the stage-the hype for the baritone sex symbol of the 1960s, '70s, and '80s, whose relationship with Australia stretches back almost as long as his singing career.
Jones' concert will be Archie's second look at an acclaimed international touring artist. He went to see Harry Styles last year. Connie doesn't have much time for the likes of Styles, and Archie's friends at school don't know who Jones is, but when Connie and Archie listen together, his grandmother's memories come flooding back of the years of travelling for the concerts.
"I ask them," Archie said of his schoolmates with a smile, "And they say, 'Who the heck is he?'"
"You could have pretended for the interview and said, 'Yeah, they know he is!'," Connie interjected.
"Well," replies the youngest fan, "I could have sang Sex Bomb, and then they would have--"
"Ok, alright, ok!" said Connie.
The pair of diehard fans are near-inseparable. They share a whip-sharp wit, a love for the singer whose range extends from romantic ballads to rock-n-roll, and decades of touring.
"I used to like how he can go to that kind of (ballad) to something a bit more rockin'," Connie said, whose career was spent for a time as an elevator operator at the old David Jones outlet in Hunter Street before she moved into the office.
She remembers dragging her co-workers (some who went willingly, others who went, as her son describes with a grin, "kicking and screaming") to Jones' concerts in Newcastle and Sydney over the years.
At 83, Jones can lay claim to an impressively tenured touring career. While-as Connie notes-his infamous dance moves are somewhat tamer these days, his relevance and honeyed baritone have lost none of their lustre.
"I take better care of (my voice) now than I did when I was young," Jones told this masthead, "When you're young, you think you're indestructible.
"I learned over the years to know what to do or what not to do. Don't drink too much alcohol, don't dry out. You've got to try and keep moist. Drink plenty of water, get sleep, and that's it, really.
Since 2012, he's been a judge of the UK's version of The Voice alongside US rapper will.i.am and English singer Anne-Marie.
It's given him the opportunity to collaborate with younger artists and provided a platform to perform. In the past fortnight, he's delivered rousing covers of Billy Haley's Rock Around The Clock and Ben E. King's Stand By Me with Anne-Marie.
Connie's Wednesday night musical dinners began a few years ago, and it didn't take long to bring the youngest in the family into the fold. Archie's older sister has been a holdout, but Connie's influence is hard to deny.
"A few years of every Wednesday night, playing the same songs," Brad said with a smile, "It keeps the tradition going. Connie seems to be able to talk a lot of people into going to see Tom Jones with her."
