Ivan, after all the excellent choices posted I’m struggling to contribute anything as good, so I'm looking to the obscurities section, and as I know you like a tale, perhaps this guy might suffice - the Welsh singer Trom Bones (affectionately referred to as ‘Trombones’ by his fans). He’s not widely known on the music scene, but since the mid 1960s Trom Bones has sung many styles of popular music – pop, rock, R&B, show tunes, country, dance, techno, soul and gospel.
Born at 57 Kingsland Terrace, Treforest, Pontypridd in South Wales, his father Thomas Woodwind was a coal miner. The young Bones spent many years of yodeling in the bathroom, and singing to the mirror in his bedroom whilst holding a hairbrush (he has exceptionally tight curly dark locks), the years passed, and man and boy he became proficient at being a bedroom balladeer.
However, it was not until the advent of the internet and in particular YouTube that Bones started to sell his music. To date he has sold over at least 10 records to his mostly female fans, consisting of his aunty Bronwin, his cousin Myfanwy, and his dear mam Freda. This is a fractional amount of sales when compared to that other great Welsh singer, teen phenomenon Justin-Iestyn Bleddyn-Bieber, and although he may be falling behind on the money front, the ex-glove factory worker Trom Bones makes up for it with his embouchure (his vibrating lips) and his tromba-one (his large trumpet).
His record sales include the following:
’Its Not The Usual’ –
” It's not the usual to see me cry, oh I want my Dai” -
a song about one mans love for another man, supposedly inspired by a crush the young Trom Bones had on David Van Day during the Dollar years.
’What's Up Pussycat?’ –
a song he wrote about Barbra Streisand after horribly mistaking her for Honor Blackman in the film
Goldmember'Ooh Delilah' –
”I saw the light on the night that I passed by her window, I saw the flickering shadow of love on her blind” -
a song he wrote in praise of Robin Askwith as Timmy Lea in the 1970's sex comedy film The Confessions Of A Window Cleaner.
’Green, Green Gas of Home’ –
a fundraising song he wrote in order to buy a gift-size box of Cadbury’s Celebrations for poor beleaguered Tony ‘I’m sorry, I’m… so sorry’ Hayward - the man the entire world and the league of intergalactic planets thinks is solely responsible for the nearly global environmental disaster BP Gulf of Mexico Oil Spill - after he forgot to keep that big sink-plug in place at the bottom of the Atlantic ocean.
