[Dixielandjazz] George Melly NY TIMES OBIT

[Steve Barbone]

Perhaps not well known in the USA, but very well know by our European list
mates, especially the Britons.

Cheers,
Steve Barbone


George Melly, 80, Jazz Singer With Flair for Extravagance, Is Dead

NY TIMES - By DOUGLAS MARTIN - July 6, 2007

George Melly, an eccentric known as a jazz and blues singer, an expert on
Surrealism, an author, a raconteur and a cultural critic ‹ as well as a
clotheshorse for loud zoot suits, jaunty fedoras and glow-in-the-dark ties ‹
died yesterday at his London home. He was 80.

He died after suffering from emphysema and dementia, his wife, Diana Melly,
told The Associated Press.

Mr. Melly¹s largest fame came for helping revive and define old-time jazz in
the Britain of the 1950s and ¹60s. A mix of Dixieland, old-time British
music hall styles and authentic blues, this brand of jazz came to be called
³trad jazz² ‹ ³trad² meaning traditional.

Though jazz reviewers often despised the banjos and bowlers of trad music,
it drew an enthusiastic following that has not completely disappeared even
as other jazz genres have mostly superseded it. Mr. Melly, whose specialty
was imitating the blues legend Bessie Smith, performed his last concert a
week ago, wearing African robes and sitting in a wheelchair. He finished his
final album the day before he died.

His showmanship knew few bounds as he generously nourished his image as ³the
dean of decadence² and ³good-time George² with three tell-all
autobiographies, onstage dirty jokes and outrageous tidbits for newspaper
reporters. In 2001 he told a reporter for the newspaper Scotland on Sunday
that becoming impotent was like being ³unchained from a lunatic.²

³As a surrealist, I quite enjoy having dementia,² he said in an interview
with Time Out London last month.

His achievements belied his perhaps affected silliness. He wrote
well-reviewed books on Surrealist, Pop and naïve art, including ³Revolt into
Style² (1970); was a critic of pop music television and film for The
Observer, the London newspaper; and wrote bitingly pithy words for a popular
cartoon strip.

Alan George Heywood Melly was born in Liverpool on Aug. 17, 1926, the son of
a wool broker and an actress who may have intentionally raised him to be
unconventional. In ³Scouse Mouse, or I Never Got Over It: An Autobiography²
(1984) (scouse refers to a Liverpool native and his dialect), Mr. Melly
recounted that his mother wanted him and his siblings to see their parents
naked, usually in the bathroom, as a matter of routine. Mr. Melly was 16
when he first heard Smith sing ³Gimme a Pig Foot² and fell in love with her
and her music. In an interview with The Herald, a Scottish newspaper, in
2005, he said he found jazz ³a marvelous antithesis to suburban Liverpool
life, and we went wildly at it.²

At Stowe, an English boarding and day school, he loved to listen to crackly
78s by Smith, Fats Waller and Jelly Roll Morton. He joined the Royal Navy at
the end of World War II because he thought the uniforms were nicer than
those of other services. Then he was given desk duty and was not allowed to
wear the bell-bottoms he had admired. He never saw combat and was almost
court-martialed for distributing anarchist literature.

After the war he found work in a Surrealist art gallery in London and
drifted into jazz music. He sang with Mick Mulligan¹s Magnolia Jazz Band
during the trad boom. He made successful records but gave up music in 1962
to concentrate on writing.

In 1974 he returned to jazz with John Chilton¹s Feetwarmers. They toured
theaters, colleges and pubs all over Britain, and their Christmas
performances at Ronnie Scott¹s, a popular jazz club in London, became a
tradition. For his personal Act II, Mr. Melly chose first to affect the look
of an American gangster with black suit, black shirt, white tie and hat,
then switched to eclectically garish outfits when, as he put it, ³the moths
got to the crotch² of his gangster get-ups.

In addition to his wife, Mr. Melly is survived by his son, Tom; his
daughter, Pandora; his stepdaughter, Candy; and his four grandchildren,
according to The Associated Press.

In the 2001 interview with Scotland on Sunday, Mr. Melly discussed getting
older.

³Billie Holiday sang what I feel in one verse,² he said: ³I ain¹t got no
future, but Lord, Lord, what a past.²