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You can play along with the first two videos! Thanks to Lana Fawcett Helman for bringing this song to BUG!
"Delilah" earned Reed and Mason the 1968 Ivor Novello award for Best Song Musically and Lyrically. The Ivor Novello Awards, named after the Welsh entertainer Ivor Novello, are awards for songwriting and composing. They have been presented annually in London by the Ivors Academy, formerly called the British Academy of Songwriters, Composers, and Authors, since 1956.
Produced by Peter Sullivan, Jones' version features a big-band accompaniment set to a flamenco rhythm. There is no explicit reference to Spain, but there are similarities to the plot of the book and opera Carmen, by French composer Georges Bizet, in which Don José stabs the eponymous Romani woman to death when she tells him she is leaving him for the bullfighter, Escamillo.
When Jones performed the song on The Ed Sullivan Show in 1968, the censors (unsuccessfully) attempted to insist that the line "At break of day when the man drove away" be changed to "At break of day I was still 'cross the way", as the original version implied that the other man had spent the night with Delilah. Jones later described the proposed change as "such bullshit".
Tom Jones' recording reached No. 1 in the charts of several countries, including Germany and Switzerland. It reached No 2 in the British charts in March 1968 and was the sixth-best selling single of that year. The US Billboard chart records its highest position as 15.