George Melly


Alan George Heywood Melly was an English jazz and blues singer, critic, writer, and lecturer. From 1965 to 1973, he was a film and television critic for The Observer; he also lectured on art history, with an emphasis on surrealism.

Early life and career

Melly was born at The Grange, St Michael's Hamlet, Toxteth, Liverpool, Lancashire, the elder son and eldest of three children of wool broker Francis Heywood Melly and Maud, née Isaac. His mother was Jewish. Melly was a descendant of the shipowner and Liberal MP George Melly. He was also a relative of the philanthropist Emma Holt, of Sudley House Liverpool; her mother had married Melly's great-grandfather.
Melly was educated at Stowe School, Buckinghamshire where he discovered his interest in modern art, jazz and blues and started coming to terms with his sexuality.
Melly was an atheist. Interviewed by Nigel Farndale in 2005, Melly said: "I don't understand people panicking about death. It's inevitable. I'm an atheist; you'd think it would make it worse, but it doesn't. I've done quite a lot in the world, not necessarily of great significance, but I have done it."

Interest in surrealist art

Melly once said that he may have been drawn to surrealism by a particular experience he had during his teenage years. A frequent visitor to Liverpool's Sefton Park near his home, he often entered its tropical Palm House and there chatted to wounded soldiers from a nearby military hospital. It was the incongruity of this sight, men smoking among the exotic plants, dressed in their hospital uniforms and usually missing a limb, that he felt he later recognised in the work of the Surrealists.
He joined the Royal Navy at the end of the Second World War because, as he quipped to the recruiting officer, the uniforms were "so much nicer". As he related in his autobiography Rum, Bum and Concertina, he was crestfallen to discover that he would not be sent to a ship and was thus denied the "bell-bottom" uniform he desired. Instead he received desk duty and wore the other Navy uniform, described as "the dreaded fore-and-aft". Later, however, he did go to sea but never saw action; he was almost court-martialled for distributing anarchist literature.

Postwar life and career

After the war Melly found work in a London surrealist gallery, working with E. L. T. Mesens and eventually drifted into the world of jazz, finding work with Mick Mulligan's Magnolia Jazz Band. This was a time when New Orleans and "New Orleans Revival" style jazz were very popular in Britain. In January 1963, the British music magazine NME reported that the biggest trad jazz event to be staged in Britain had taken place at Alexandra Palace. The event included Alex Welsh, Diz Disley, Acker Bilk, Chris Barber, Kenny Ball, Ken Colyer, Monty Sunshine, Bob Wallis, Bruce Turner, Mick Mulligan and Melly.
In 1956 he became a writer on the Daily Mails satirical newspaper strip Flook, illustrated by Trog. He continued this until 1971. He retired from jazz in 1962 when he became a film critic for The Observer. He was also scriptwriter on the 1967 satirical film Smashing Time. The period from 1948 until 1963 is described in Owning Up. He returned to jazz in the early 1970s with John Chilton's Feetwarmers, a partnership that ended in 2003. He later sang with Digby Fairweather's band. He released six albums in the 1970s including Nuts in 1972 and Son of Nuts the next year. He wrote a light column, Mellymobile, in Punch magazine describing their tours.
He was an Honorary Associate of the National Secular Society and a Distinguished Supporter of the British Humanist Association. Melly was President of the BHA 1972–4, and was also an Honorary Associate of the Rationalist Association. He was also a member of the Max Miller Appreciation Society and, on 1 May 2005, joined Roy Hudd, Norman Wisdom, and others to unveil a statue of Miller in Brighton.
His singing style, in particular for the blues, was strongly influenced by his idol, Bessie Smith. While many British musicians of the time treated jazz and blues with almost religious solemnity, Melly rejoiced in their more bawdy side, and this was reflected in his choice of songs and exuberant stage performances. He recorded a track called "Old Codger" with The Stranglers in 1978, the lyrics of which were specially written for him by then band member, Hugh Cornwell.
Melly, who was bisexual, moved from strictly homosexual relationships in his teens and twenties to largely heterosexual relationships from his thirties onwards. He married twice and had a child from each marriage, though his first child Pandora was not known to be his until she was much older.
He married his second wife, Diana Moynihan, in 1963 and they lived on Gloucester Crescent in Camden Town. She brought with her two children from two previous marriages. Patrick died from a heroin overdose in his twenties. Their own son, Tom, was born two days after the wedding. Diana published an autobiography, Take a Girl Like Me, describing their life and open marriage together, in 2005.

Scethrog

George and Diana Melly had a country retreat, Scethrog Tower in the Usk Valley, between 1971 and 1999. This was somewhere Melly could escape the jazz world and indulge his love of fishing on the River Usk. Jazz followed him and this led to a series of celebrated performances in the area and in the valleys. In 1984 the Brecon Jazz Festival was conceived by a group of jazz enthusiasts who gained widespread support from the local community. Melly was the first musician to be contracted for the opening festival and remained a supporter until his death. He was a factor in the festival's success and served as its president in 1991.
As well as being the President of the Contemporary Arts Society for Wales, Melly was a contemporary art collector. His passion for surrealist art continued throughout his life and he lectured and wrote extensively on the subject. His passion for fly-fishing never dwindled and in later life he sold several important paintings enabling him to buy a mile of land by the River Usk. In 2000 he published Hooked!, a book on fly-fishing.

Later years and death

Melly was still active in music, journalism, and lecturing on surrealism and other aspects of modern art until his death, despite worsening health problems such as vascular dementia, incipient emphysema, and lung cancer. His encouragement and support to gallery owner Michael Budd led to a posthumous exhibition for the modern abstract artist François Lanzi.
Melly suffered from environmental hearing loss because of long-term exposure to stage sound systems, and his hearing in both ears became increasingly poor. Despite these problems, Melly would often joke that he found some parts of his ailing health to be enjoyable. He often equated his dementia to a quite amusing LSD trip, and took a lot of pleasure from his deafness, which he said made many boring conversations more interesting. On Sunday 10 June 2007, Melly made an appearance, announced as his last ever performance, at the 100 Club in London. This was on the occasion of a fund-raising event to benefit the charity supporting his carers.
He died at his London home of lung cancer and emphysema, aged 80, on 5 July 2007. His humanist funeral was held at the West London Crematorium, in Kensal Green. The hearse was led by a jazz band, including Kenny Ball on trumpet, playing a New Orleans funeral march. His cardboard coffin was covered with old snapshots and cartoons of Melly by his friends, as well as hand-drawn decorations.
On 17 February 2008 BBC Two broadcast George Melly's Last Stand, an intimate portrayal of Melly's last months. His sister Andrée Melly was an actress, who lived in Ibiza with her husband, Oscar Quitak. In 2018 writer, musician and film maker Chris Wade made a documentary about Melly entitled The Certainty of Hazard, featuring his wife Diana, son Tom, and various friends and associates.
Diana Melly died on 2 February 2025, at the age of 87.

Books partly about Melly

  • Take a Girl Like Me
  • Hot Jazz, Warm Feet
  • On the Road with George Melly
  • ''The Life and Work of George Melly''

    Selected discography

Singles

George Melly Trio
  • "Rock Island Line" b/w "Send Me to the 'Lectric Chair"
George Melly With Alex Welsh and his Dixielanders
  • "Frankie and Johnny" b/w "I'm Down in the Dumps"
George Melly
  • "Kitchen Man" b/w "Jazzbo Brown from Memphis Town"
George Melly With Mick Mulligan and his Band
  • "Kingdom Coming" b/w "I'm a Ding Dong Daddy"
George Melly With Mick Mulligan's Jazz Band
  • "Jenny's Ball" b/w "Muddy Water"
George Melly With Mick Mulligan and his Band
  • "Waiting For a Train" b/w Railroadin' Man
George Melly With Mick Mulligan and his Band
  • "Heebie Jeebies" b/w "My Canary Has Circles Under His Eyes"
George Melly
  • "Black Bottom" b/w "Magnolia"
  • "Abdul Abulbul Amir" b/w "Get Away, Old Man, Get Away"
  • "Ise a Muggin'" b/w "Run Come See Jerusalem"
  • "Monkey and the Baboon" b/w "Funny Feathers"
George Melly and the Feetwarmers
  • "Nuts" b/w "Sam Jones Blues"
George Melly with John Chilton's Feetwarmers
  • "Good Time George" b/w "My Canary Has Circles Under His Eyes"
George Melly with John Chilton's Feetwarmers and His Orchestra
  • "Billy Fisher" b/w "Punchdrunk Mama"
George Melly with John Chilton's Feetwarmers
  • "Ain't Misbehavin'" b/w "My Canary Has Circles Under His Eyes"
George Melly with John Chilton's Feetwarmers and Other Friends
  • "I Long To Get It On Down" b/w "Inflation Blues"
George Melly
  • "Pennies from Heaven" b/w "Punch and Judy"
  • "Makin' Whoopee" b/w "Everybody Loves My Baby"
George Melly with John Chilton's Feetwarmers
  • "Masculine Women, Feminine Men" b/w "It's The Bluest Kind of Blues"
  • "Hometown" b/w "I Won't Grow Old"
  • "Anything Goes" b/w "September Song"