Gordon William Mills (15 May 1935 – 29 July 1986) was a successful London-based music industry manager and songwriter. He was born in Madras, British India and grew up in Trealaw in the Rhondda Valley, South Wales. During the 1960s and 1970s, he managed the careers of three highly successful musical artists - Tom Jones, Engelbert Humperdinck and Gilbert O'Sullivan. Mills was also a songwriter, penning hits for Cliff Richard, Johnny Kidd & the Pirates, Freddie and the Dreamers, the Applejacks, Paul Jones, Peter and Gordon and Tom Jones, most notably co-writing Jones's signature song "It's Not Unusual" with Les Reed.
Biography
Mills's parents met and married in British India when his father was serving in the British Army. They returned to Britain shortly after Gordon's birth. An only child, Mills was taught to play the harmonica by his mother, Lorna.
At age 15, Mills joined a group playing in pubs and clubs in the South Wales Valleys. At age 17, he was called up for National Service and served in Germany and Malaya.
Returning to the UK, he competed in a harmonica championship event organised by Hohner at the Royal Albert Hall in London. He came second, qualifying him to represent the UK in the European final which he then won. Invited to join the Morton Fraser Harmonica Gang, he met musicians Don Paul and Ronnie Wells with whom he formed a trio known as the Viscounts. One song "Who Put the Bomp (in the Bomp, Bomp, Bomp)" (1961) became a minor hit in the UK Singles Chart. Their cover of "Short'nin' Bread" (1960) also had some earlier success.
Mills wrote some songs, with his first "I'll Never Get Over You", recorded by Johnny Kidd & the Pirates, reaching No. 4 in the UK in 1963. In the space of a year he wrote three more hits "Hungry for Love", "Jealous Girl" and "Three Little Words". "I'm the Lonely One" gave Cliff Richard and the Shadows a top 10 success in 1964.
At a party given by singer Terry Dene, Mills met model Jo Waring and they married two years later. Their daughter Clair, then three years old, became the subject of the 1972 song "Clair" by Gilbert O'Sullivan.
Watching a performance by Tommy Scott and the Senators One, one night in Cwmtillery, he saw a new young singer named Tom Woodward. Mills eventually became the manager of Woodward, whom he renamed "Tom Jones," after signing a management transfer contract with Woodward's joint managers Raymond William Godfrey and Raymond John Glastonbury ("Myron & Byron"). The two had already signed the singer to Decca Records, after terminating their previous recording agreement with Joe Meek of RGM Sound Ltd. They retained a 5% interest in Jones, but had to sue Jones and Mills in the High Court for non-fulfilment, finally obtaining a settlement, in 1969, for an undisclosed sum.
Jones' first single "Chills and Fever", originally recorded with Joe Meek, was released in late 1964, but was not a hit. Jones' second attempt was a song turned down by Sandie Shaw. The song was "It's Not Unusual" which propelled him into the top reaches of the chart. Mills then wanted to break Jones into recording film soundtracks but, after the relative failure of the James Bond theme song "Thunderball" (UK No. 35), another approach was needed.
Mills redesigned the singer's image into that of a crooner. Jones also began to sing material that appealed to a wider audience such as the big country hit "Green, Green Grass of Home". The strategy worked and Jones returned to the top of the charts in the United Kingdom and began hitting the Top 40 again in the United States. For the remainder of the decade, he scored a string of hits on both sides of the Atlantic. In 1967, Jones performed in Las Vegas for the first time, at the Flamingo.
In 1965, Mills started working with Gerry Dorsey, a singer who had been around for a long time without major success, changing his name to Engelbert Humperdinck and with television exposure on a Sunday night in 1967 at the London Palladium, a new star was born. Between 1967 and 1972, Mills had two of the biggest stars in the music industry under his control and he signed female singer/songwriter Lynsey de Paul who had just scored a huge hit with "Sugar Me", but by the end of 1973 she had left the label. As revealed in his 2015 autobiography, Tom Jones stated "We had Lynsey de Paul, a big star, though she fell out with Gordon (Mills) for wanting to produce her own records" but de Paul was also not happy about decisions on which of her songs were recorded and released too.