The outsized vocalist George Melly stood as postwar Britain’s most celebrated and controversial champion of the trad jazz revival. Esteemed as a memoirist, art critic, and bon vivant whose legendary appetites for liquor and carnal pursuits earned him the apt nickname “the Oscar Wilde of English jazz,” he entered the world as Alan George Heywood Melly in Liverpool on August 17, 1926. His 1984 memoir Scouse Mouse later recounted that upbringing, attributing his enduring love of music hall to his socially prominent mother and her circle of friends that included actor Michael Redgrave and dancer Frederick Ashton. While a student at Stowe he encountered both surrealism and jazz, influences that would define his singular outlook. In 1944 he enlisted in the Royal Navy, where a string of same-sex liaisons later supplied the material for his 1977 memoir Rum, Bum and Concertina.
Following the war he took a post at the London Gallery, run by E.L.T. Mesens, the longtime associate of René Magritte and editor of the London Bulletin. He also embarked on an intense affair with Mesens’s wife Sybil before spending the winter of 1946 aboard Senior Service vessels, handing out anarchist pamphlets along the South Coast and throughout the Mediterranean. Back in civilian London he found himself amid the rising enthusiasm for 1920s American jazz and blues. Lacking formal training, he nevertheless possessed a gravelly voice, razor-sharp wit, and flamboyant zoot suits that made him an immediate stage presence, leading him in 1949 to join Mick Mulligan’s Magnolia Jazz Band.
Armed with a vast catalog of Bessie Smith and Fats Waller numbers together with a ready supply of ribald anecdotes and double entendres, he quickly became a favorite among trad jazz enthusiasts. His amphetamine-fueled exploits on and off the bandstand later filled the 1965 memoir Owning Up. In 1956, however, he shifted focus to writing when he was commissioned to supply gags and captions for the long-running comic strip Flook, drawn by clarinetist Wally Fawkes. Though he kept performing and cut several EPs for Decca, the arrival of Beatlemania curtailed public interest in jazz, prompting him to accept the role of pop music and film critic at The Observer. In 1967 he finished his first screenplay, Smashing Time.
He resumed live work in 1974 alongside John Chilton & the Feetwarmers, maintaining an on-and-off touring relationship until Chilton’s retirement in 2002. Undaunted, he promptly formed a new partnership with trumpeter Digby Fairweather’s Half Dozen. Declining health soon required surgery that left him wearing a pirate-style eyepatch. Diagnosed in 2005 with lung cancer and subsequently vascular dementia, he persisted on stage and declined treatment that might compromise his voice. He collapsed during a January 2007 appearance in East Sussex and gave his final performance that June at London’s 100 Club. He died on July 5, 2007.
