International superstar Sir Tom Jones has chosen Edinburgh singer Colin Chisholm to be part of ‘Team Tom’ on BBC’s Saturday night hit show ‘The Voice.’
The 60 year old father of two from Chesser beat 35,000 hopefuls to appear on the ‘blind audition’ of the popular talent show in front Sir Tom, Jessie J, Danny O’Donoghue of The Script and Will.I.Am.
Colin, who was nominated by daughter Chloe without his knowledge, gave an outstanding performance of the old Roy Orbison / Cindi Lauper hit ‘I Drove All Night,’ and as his excited family, including wife Gillian, son David and daughter Chloe watched nervously from back stage, Sir Tom quickly eased their worries when he turned his chair round and make Colin the eleventh member of his roster.
It was obvious that Colin’s performance had impressed the other judges as well; however they all felt that his style was best suited to 72 year old legend and left him to it.
Afterwards, Jessie J described Colin and Sir Tom as a ‘Perfect Match’ which Will.I.Am called their partnership “Danger in the midst,” suggesting that he was a strong contender to win the first prize of a recording contract.
Colin thanked Sir Tom for selecting him, and the Welshman replied: “You’re welcome, I thought you sounded great. Your tone and pitch was right on. You got into the song and you sang it the way you felt it”
Colin was delighted to have Sir Tom as his coach as he believes that he can learn the most from him due to his “constantly reinventing himself” and said; “He’s been the best singer for the decades. In my opinion, he’s got a phenomenal voice.”
The last round of ‘Blind Auditions’ take place next week which will leave all four coaches with 12 contestants each. After that, the coaches pit two of their own team members against each other to sing the same song together in front of a studio audience, then after the vocal face-off, the coach must choose only one to advance to the next stage.
At the end of the knockout rounds, the strongest members of each coach’ team proceed to the live stage shows, where the television audience vote to save one contestant on each team, leaving the coach to decide on live television who they want to save.
Finally, each coach will have his/her best contestant left standing to compete in the finals, singing an original song. From these four, one will be named “The Voice”—and will receive the grand cash prize of a recording contract.
Colin has tasted the big time before, as a singer with Edinburgh band Bilbo Baggins in the early seventies, sharing manager Tam Paton with the Bay City Rollers.
The group consisted of Colin, Clermiston trio Brian Spence, Gordon McIntosh and James Devlin along with Gordon Liddle from Glasgow. In a seven year spell, ‘BB’ as they were known to fans played over 100 gigs throughout the country, supporting top bands such as Mud.
Although the group did not have the same success at The Rollers, many considered them to be the more talented band.
Their distinctive style involved long, faded denim coats with high-waist baggy white trousers, although later they all wore school-style blazers with a pocket badge embroidered with the BB initials.
They soon gathered a large following and appeared on Top of the Pops with ‘She’s Gonna Win’ which reached number 42 in the charts, but other songs like the Sha-Na-Na-Na Song, I Can Feel Mad and Back Home failed to reach the top 40. They also appeared with a young Toyah Wilcox in 1978 in a television drama called Glitter, in which they played her favourite band.
The arrival of punk rock at the end of the decade spelt an end to the band, although since then Colin has had a successful solo career on the music circuit, and even joined his beloved Jambos in the studio when they recorded an updated version of The Hearts Song which is still played at Tynecastle.
Less well known however, is that he crossed the great divide to release ‘Hibs Heroes’ which is also a regular track on match-days at Easter Road.
The Edinburgh Reporter will be following the talented Colin’s progress throughout the show.
John graduated from Telford College in 2010 with an HNC in Practical Journalism and since then he worked for the North Edinburgh News, The Southern Reporter, the Irish News Review and The Edinburgh Reporter. In addition he has been published in the Edinburgh Evening News and the Hibernian FC Programme.
