(USA TODAY) -- And now, for the next he-said-what? story trending, comes Tom Jones, the British singer from Wales, last seen at the top of the pop charts in the 1960s with songs such as It's Not Unusual.
He's 75 now and has just written an autobiography, so it's not unusual he'd be promoting it in the London press. What is unusual is what he said in The Times of London over the weekend, when he declared that he's planning to get a DNA test to prove once and for all whether he might be black.
Or part black. Or at least have some African ancestry dating back hundreds of years or ...well...millennia.
It's confusing because Rupert Murdoch's The Times is behind a paywall so the original interview is unavailable. And the London media who jumped on the story later, such as the Daily Mail, produced stories only minimally coherent about what Jones might be talking about.
But as far as we can tell, Jones thinks he might have African ancestry based on what he says people, especially Americans, have always told him: He's just "passing" as white, because his hair looks African, like a Welsh Afro (actually, it's snow-white now but it was dark once upon a time), and his belting baritone sounds black. Also, he tans well.
"‘A lot of people still think I'm black," he told The Times. "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. Because of my hair, a lot of black people still tell me I'm just passing as white."
The most inexplicable piece of evidence he cited was his mother, Freda, who was of Welsh and English descent (his father Thomas was English).
After he was born, Jones explained, "My mother came out in big dark patches all over her body. They asked if she had any black blood and she said she didn't know," he said.
What does this mean? Were these patches permanent? Did any doctors check her for a skin disorder? Does this happen to other people or is it just a British thing? Jones doesn't say, and apparently, he never asked his mother about this before she died in 2003.
So he's turning to the DNA. "I'm going to get my DNA tested. I want to find out," he said.
With advances in DNA testing, a slew of companies have sprung up to offer consumers help in tracing their genealogy, either their near ancestors or their "deep ancestry." Possibly it's the latter that Jones is talking about.
By analyzing the information stored on either the paternal or maternal chromosomes — inherited from your father or your mother and traceable back over millennia — some DNA tests can give you a general picture of the geographical origin of your total gene package — say, the percentage originating in Europe, or in Asia, or in Africa, or in the indigenous Americas, within the last few hundred years.
"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," says Catherine Ball, vice president of Ancestry.com and an expert in genomics. "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."
Kasia Bryc, the population geneticist at leading DNA company 23andMe.com, says the test Jones might use takes a cheek swab and compares a person's DNA with that of the DNA collected from populations all over the world, looking at differences and variations.
"We use subtle patterns of differences and variations to estimate where different bits of your DNA came from around the world," she says. "But the time frame is source of common confusion for a lot of people."
In fact, she says, there's a difference between what the tests will tell you about your relatively recent ancestry of about 500 years back, versus your deep ancestry 50,000 years back.
But neither is going to definitively say you are black or not, because that is a cultural term, not a DNA term, she says.
"It's difficult to guess at hidden ancestry based on your appearance, it can be misleading," she says. "But I can empathize with the idea of (Jones) wanting to figure out more about himself. It's understandable to be curious, and DNA testing is great at giving a little bit of information, and giving you the tools to ask questions."
Jones' new book, Over the Top and Back: The Autobiography, will be published Nov. 24.
