Hosted by The Province of East Kent Freemasons In Aid of the Masonic Charitable Foundation 2025 Festival Sponsored By In the 1960s, the pianist, songwriter and arranger Les Reed was given a simple dictum by the music manag- er Gordon Mills: “Romantic songs for Engelbert Humperdinck, sexy ones for Tom Jones.” With the lyricist Barry Mason, Les wrote The Last Waltz (1967) and Winter World of Love (1969) for Humperdinck and I’m Coming Home (1966) and Delilah (1968) for Jones. Les Reed, who has died aged 83, also wrote the arrangement for another of Jones’s biggest hits, Green, Green Grass of Home (1967). “I got to know what Tom liked,” said Les. “He loved good lyrics and he liked melodies with a little blues touch and once you’ve got that, you’re home.” Les was involved in John Barry’s hit records Walk – Don’t Run and Hit and Miss, and he was the second pia- nist on Russ Conway’s Pepe (1961). The John Barry Seven recorded and toured with the pop star Adam Faith, who was best man at Les’s wedding to June Williams in 1960. Les was born in Westfield, on the outskirts of Woking, Surrey. His father, Ralph, arranged for him to have pi- ano lessons from an early age. Although Ralph was away fighting in the second world war as Les grew up, he would write home, giving encouragement and setting objectives. In 1962, Les left Barry and joined Piccadilly Records, a new subsidiary of Pye. He arranged hit records for Joe Brown and Emile Ford and almost had a hit himself in 1963 by rocking up Mozart in Minuet Mash by the Les Reed Combo. His first successful composition was the chirpy Tell Me When, written with Geoff Ste- phens for the beat group the Applejacks, on Decca in 1964. Mills, a singer and songwriter in the musical trio the Viscounts, had then recently signed Tom Jones to a management contract, having heard him sing in a working-men’s club in Wales. He asked Les to complete and arrange a song he had begun writing, It’s Not Unusual. It became Jones’s first No 1, in 1965. Les arranged You’ve Got Your Troubles for the Fortunes, a No 2 in 1965, and wrote his first hit with Mason with the follow-up, Here It Comes Again. He added polish to arrangements for the Dave Clark Five, and with Mason wrote Everybody Knows, a No 2 hit for them in 1967. Les got the idea for another hit when he was talking to a friend, Tony Phillips, about how his (not very busy) acting career was going. Phillips told him, “There’s a kind of hush all over the world.” “Can I use that?” asked Reed and Phillips replied, “Be my guest.” There’s a Kind of Hush was a hit for Herman’s Hermits in 1967 and an international success for the Carpenters in 1976. Les could simply have lived off the royalties from The Last Waltz, a No 1 for Humperdinck, but he was pas- sionate about music. He enjoyed conducting a Beatles medley for the London Philharmonic Orchestra in 1967 so much that he undertook many further orchestral concerts. He conducted for international song fes- tivals and wrote several songs for these events, notably Love Is All, sung by Malcolm Roberts at the 1969 Rio de Janeiro song festival. He hosted a TV series, The International Pop Proms, for Granada in 1976. He was appointed OBE in 1998. Leslie David Reed, songwriter and musician, born 24 July 1935; died 15 April 2019

Hosted by The Province of East Kent Freemasons In Aid of the Masonic Charitable Foundation 2025 Festival Sponsored By