Melly, George

▪ 2008

Alan George Heywood Melly 

      British jazz singer and writer

born Aug. 17, 1926, Liverpool, Eng.

died July 5, 2007, London, Eng.

was admired as much for his flamboyant, outsize personality as for his traditional jazz singing and his trenchant cultural criticism. During the 1950s he sang with Mick Mulligan's Magnolia Jazz Band, performing largely bawdy 1920s American jazz and blues, and he then worked (1965–74) as a pop music, television, and film critic for the newspaper The Observer. In 1972 he returned to performing, this time with John Chilton's Feetwarmers, with whom he sang for the next 30 years. Melly wrote several books on Pop art and on Surrealism, including Revolt into Style: The Pop Arts in Britain (1970) and Paris and the Surrealists (1991), as well as two screenplays, the text for cartoon strips, and four volumes of frank and witty memoirs.

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