Tom Jones Undergoing DNA Test To Discover If He’s Black

Tom Jones recently revealed that he plans to undergo DNA testing to settle once or for all if he has any black ancestry.

Tom Jones DNA Testing

Throughout Jones’ career, he was often mistaken for being Africa-American. When people heard his deep baritone voice, they assumed that he was a black singer. His dark curly hair did little to quell the speculation about his ancestry, despite his light skin.

“When I first came to America, people who had heard me sing on the radio would be surprised that I was white when they saw me,” Jones said in a recent interview with The Times of London. “Because of my hair, a lot of black people still tell me I’m just passing as white.”

“My mother came out in big dark patches all over her body,” Jones added to The Times. “They asked if she had any black blood and she said she didn’t know.”

“I’m going to get my DNA tested,” Jones vowed. “I want to find out.”

Jones was born in 1940 to an English father and a mother who was half-English and half-Welsh. It’s possible, with advances in DNA testing, to determine details of a person’s more recent – as well as their more distant – ancestors. Specifically, it can determine the geographical origin of one’s gene package.

“Yes, tens of thousands of years ago we were all from Africa but since then the human race has migrated to all parts of the world,” Catherine Ball, vice president of Ancestry.com and an expert in genomics, told USA Today. “What we can do with a DNA test now is compare any person’s DNA to that of people living around the world now, and that could tell you a lot more about your more recent ancestry.”