Managed Tom Jones, Englebert Humperdinck : Gordon Mills, 51; Songwriter and Agent

Gordon Mills, an inexperienced agent who took two unheralded singers named Thomas Jones Woodward and Arnold George Dorsey and turned them into Tom Jones and Englebert Humperdinck, has died of cancer.

Mills, who also wrote Jones’ signature song, “It’s Not Unusual,” was 51 and died Tuesday at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center, hospital spokesman Ron Wise said.

A manager who took a fatherly, albeit proprietary interest in his clients, Mills developed a multimillion-dollar management agency from chance encounters with his two best-known stars.

Born in India

He was born in India where his British soldier father was stationed, and he became interested in music by listening to the radio and then performing briefly with a harmonica trio. He began to write songs and found that an inherent shyness made him more comfortable composing than performing.

Mills had experienced modest success with his songs (one, recorded by Johnny Kidd & the Pirates, called “I’ll Never Get Over You” was a brief hit) when a friend encouraged him to drop by a nightclub in Wales. On the stage was “Tommy Scott,” who was born Thomas Jones Woodward. Mills was impressed with the voice and forceful delivery.

Although as inexperienced managerially as the young singer was vocally, he convinced Jones to get out of clubs that catered to teen-agers, put him in a tuxedo that showed off his physique and shortened the name to Tom Jones. In 1965 Jones recorded Mills’ “It’s Not Unusual.”

Mills remembered in a 1971 interview with The Times how “mature women would get up on the stage (with Jones). I could see they wanted someone to relate to just as the younger audiences wanted to relate to rock stars.”

His next managerial triumph was nearly as immediate.

Recorded ‘Release Me’

Arnold George Dorsey was performing as Gerry Dorsey, and his career in England was proving singularly unexciting. Mills financed a record (“Release Me”), took it to some producers and identified the singer as “Englebert Humperdinck,” fearing that Dorsey’s name was known just well enough to inspire apathy. (Humperdinck was a 19th-Century German composer.)

The record and a 1967 appearance on British television made the new Humperdinck far better known than the original.

Mills, who was divorced and is survived by his mother and five children, maintained a small zoo of exotic animals at his English home in Weybridge, where he lived when not at his house here. He once donated seven orangutans and five gorillas to the San Diego zoo and one of them fathered the first gorilla born there in 20 years, zoo spokesman Jeff Jouett said.

The baby was named Gordon, Jouett added.

In separate statements, Jones and Humperdinck said Wednesday that they “were shocked and saddened” to learn of Mills’ death.