Another development was that on this album guests were to make an appearance. Jack Higgins was sure that Jacqui Dankworth would be a perfect duettist with our star and together we decided on two titles: ‘The Big Butter and Egg Man’ and, more predictably perhaps, ‘Let’s Call the Whole Thing Off’. Then, one evening at his regular venue, the Chicken Shed Theatre in Enfield, Julian met Tobias Hug. Tobias was a member of the Swingle Singers, the classic group founded by Ward Swingle in the 1960s and now consisting of a bright new young team. ‘Yes!’ said Toby. ‘We’d love to be on the album. And for free if you want!’ Marvellous!
Perhaps the most unexpected and spectacular guest to be approached, however, was Van Morrison, by now an international superstar. I’d met him on odd occasions in the late 1970s with his former colleague John Altman but never since. In fact one night when the two of them had come to Pizza Express to see a small group of mine, I’d made the serious misjudgement of announcing his presence to the audience and our celebrated visitor was off and up the stairs like a turkey through the corn. To my delight, however, Van had requested a full set of our It’s Trad, Dad collaboration from Heavy Entertainment and it was clear that he retained a strong affection for the British heroes of traditional jazz. On one recent album Acker Bilk had made a welcome appearance, and George had been invited to sit in with ‘Van the Man’ on live appearances at festivals. I couldn’t believe that he would do it but, after letters passed between George and his management, the agreement was set. Van Morrison would indeed duet with George for two tracks on the album, and I began friendly dialogue with his helpful manager Bob Johnson who did everything to make things easy, while protecting the privacy of his client. Yes, Van would be happy to record ‘Backwater Blues’, it was the first Bessie Smith record he had owned. The key of G would be fine. And we would do an up-tempo blues for track two. However, there were a few unshakeable conditions: his client would receive the same billing in the same-size lettering as the remaining guests; names were to appear in alphabetical order on the CD cover; a first-class hotel was to be located and booked (at his expense) before the session, and there would be no other attempt to cash in on his celebrity. Nor would there be any charge!
I was excited by all this; new arrangements and again, once the creative blister was broken, new lyrics too seemed to fall out of my pen. Very quickly the time came to start recording. So backing tracks – piano, guitar, bass and drums – were laid down at Nick Taylor’s Porcupine Studio on 12 October and the following Saturday Van would join us to record live. But the day before, while we were getting ready to play at the Theatre Royal, Margate, Bob Johnson called. ‘We can’t record Van at Porcupine, Dig,’ he said. ‘We might have to reschedule or maybe find a studio on the south coast somewhere.’ I was worried, this was a last-minute flanker.
‘But, Bob,’ I said, ‘that could be difficult at this sort of notice.’
I didn’t like to ask why the veto had been applied but found out later that Van’s advance guard had driven past Porcupine Studios and found it to be in nothing more than a medium-sized house, far more modest than our superstar collaborator was used to. But in the event, and generously, Bob (and Van) waived their veto an hour or so later. ‘Never mind, Dig,’ said Bob, ‘Van was going to drive up after his show and stay near the studio. But he’s agreed to drive up to Porcupine in the morning instead.’
So, on the morning we gathered at Mottingham, a little on the nervous side. Van, we had been told, should be addressed via his manager, never in person. But promptly at 10 a.m. a limousine drew up and Van Morrison, Bob and a selection of staff stepped out and he walked into the studio.
‘Hi, Digby!’ he said, extending a hand. ‘I haven’t seen you since 1979.’ I couldn’t believe it.
After that things went swimmingly. I handed our two singers their words and efficiently Van marked the verses he was to sing alternately with George. Yes, he preferred modest volume in the studio. And why don’t we go for a take? Which we did. With our rhythm section – Craig, Dominic, Len and Bobby – firing on all cylinders, Van with headphones in the studio and George behind glass in the engineer’s booth similarly equipped, we knocked off both takes within three-quarters of an hour and then, at his expense again, Van took us all for lunch in an elegant nearby restaurant.
The following week, we added George’s remaining vocals to the basic tracks; then on the Wednesday in came the Swingle Singers to record a stylish close-harmony version of ‘Straighten Up and Fly Right’, to which we would add George’s vocal part later. Brass and strings were added in the first week of November and, in the third, Julian, as great an engineer as he is a musician, performed production miracles. When I took the album to a prominent mastering studio in north London they could find nothing to add to Julian’s faultless work. This really was an album to reckon with. And when George heard the results he could hardly believe the creations that had grown up alongside his original vocal tracks. ‘Quite remarkable,’ he said, ‘and certainly my finest album! Even if the title has a certain ominous ring to it.’ Alan Bates had decided that it would be called The Ultimate Melly.
By this time two more Melly books had appeared: the first of them George’s Slowing Down, a chronicle of his diminishing abilities as old age approached. Typically frank, humorous and observant, it was liked by almost everyone, apart from Jack Higgins. ‘Fucking good idea to tell ’em all that,’ said his acerbic agent, ‘that really should stop you getting any more work.’ Which, luckily, it did not. Second to appear was Diana Melly’s own cry from the heart, Take a Girl Like Me. I liked Diana very much (she had always been friendly as well as understandingly generous over the matters of George’s incontinence, extra money for hotel rooms on long trips and so on) but I had reservations over her book. It seemed to me to reveal the thoughts of a woman who lived largely outside the aesthetics and rules of the jazz world and consequently appeared confused by the psyche of the jazz performer. I had also noticed on our phone conversations that, once businesss was concluded (almost always satisfactorily and with generosity), she would put the phone down rightaway, and sometimes declared herself too busy to talk for long as other more urgent matters were awaiting her attention. As she had said on our first meeting, life with George was less fun than it had been in the Mick Mulligan days.
Nevertheless her book received fine reviews almost everywhere. She had clearly endured rough times with George, including extended infidelities, but balls had been present in both courts. Undeterred nevertheless, and with a certain triumph, she embarked, with her husband’s full and publicly expressed approval, on a series of appearances at literary lunches and festivals, talking about her forty-year marriage to one of Britain’s principal cultural icons.
It was also around this time that Warner Brothers had decided to issue George’s celebrated pair of albums Nuts and its follow-up Son of Nuts as a stylish double CD. By now Nuts and its offspring had reached the status of a cult classic. But should we sell this new album at our concerts? Lisa fairly and squarely thought not; it seemed unfair to Peter Clayton, our devoted record producer, and now Alan Bates. And, while I was unsure, George himself, with typical generosity, put the block on the idea too. No, we would sell only our new recordings as we travelled the circuit. Warner Brothers would have to take their chances through the retail outlets. That was all.
With The Ultimate Melly completed and production on schedule for Christmas, it was time to go back on the road: with the Giants of Jazz (Humphrey Lyttelton and Kenny Ball) at the Chichester Festival Theatre late November, and then our annual visit to Norwich Playhouse, where once again we had the kindest reception from a full house, before our Ronnie’s season.
This was to be a long one: five whole weeks running from 12 December 2005 right through to 7 January 2006. Quite a haul but once again the ‘house full’ signs were up every night, despite the Evening Standard’s jazz critic’s ritual vilification of George and some of our band. Sir Paul McCartney came in to see us early one evening. Craig
and I settled into a friend’s Hampstead flat, sleeping much of the day and then getting up for the drive into town for our late-night stints. And, once again, Julian heroically doubled Ronnie’s with his Christmas show at the Chicken Shed Theatre, always arriving on time. But it was a killing schedule and, once again, played havoc with my body clock. Already George’s new book Slowing Down had documented my wrathful dealing with a drunken fan the year before at Ronnie’s, who persistently annoyed Melly in the lower bar where we relaxed between sets and sold records. Infuriated, and inflamed with vodka, I had confronted the invader, threatening him with four-letter words (faithfully enumerated and reprinted in George’s account – an unfortunate addition to my place in written jazz history), plus threats to have him either thrown out or deal with me personally. The intruder left, luckily perhaps for me.
Ronnie’s that year was also the scene for one of George’s most self-loved ripostes. He was seldom heckled but on this occasion, having announced a tune by Fats Waller, heard an importunate voice raising a cockney query from the back of the club: ‘’Oo’s Fats Waller?’
George’s gorgon stare focused in the direction of his inquisitor. ‘’Oo’s Fats Waller?’ he retorted incredulously. ‘Who are YOU?’ This swift and justified response, and its story, appeared in his act regularly thereafter.
But the strain of performing until all hours night after night, week after week, combined with drink, led me on this season to lay into two of my band colleagues for the comparatively minor mistake of sitting in with our warm-up band, Ray Gelato’s Giants. This was the only time that happened but I was ashamed and apologies were necessary in the morning. All in all, despite the success of the season, it was a relief to meet with January and the restoration of a daytime schedule temporarily (at least) devoid of baggy eyes, tired embouchures and booze.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
The Madness of King George
‘Dig,’ Diana had asked on one of her morning telephone calls. ‘Can you remember when George was first diagnosed with dementia?’
I couldn’t. But sometime over the past year or so, at one of his now-frequent visits to hospitals and doctors, George Melly had indeed been told that he was suffering from a form of the condition called vascular dementia, a progressively debilitating disease which, like Alzheimer’s, gradually reduces the mental faculties of its sufferers. The madness of King George was now official.
Our star, however, seemed blissfully unconcerned. Indeed, it seemed to allow him the option of justifying his inability to remember small inconvenient details. He was happy to announce to friends and audiences alike, ‘Well, of course, now you know I’m actually mad!’ The thespian within our star seemed to allow him to thoroughly enjoy the admission. And only Jack Higgins felt inclined to explode.
‘How the hell,’ he roared at his client one morning, ‘do you expect me to get you work if you’re putting it around that you’re mad?’
‘It doesn’t help if you shout at me, Jack,’ observed his client of thirty years imperturbably. ‘I can’t hear you any better.’
Jack had come up the hard way, as we well knew, and hearing that one of his longest associates and top stars was voluntarily declaring himself insane was not a popular move. George’s progressive deafness was making things worse too, particularly as, with the help of an old PR colleague, Jackie Gill, Jack was busy setting up strings of radio interviews for the two of us in order to promote The Ultimate Melly, which we completed during January. Their relationship rapidly deteriorated and by the year’s end these two old colleagues and sparring partners were no longer speaking to each other.
George’s legendary sexuality was becoming a thing of the past too. ‘When I was your age,’ he had said to me previously, ‘I had to tie my cock around my waist. But now’ – a wonderful phrase, this – ‘it’s like being unleashed from a demon!’ Just occasionally though the demon would make a valiant return. One afternoon a young Australian blues singer, the daughter of an old colleague, had arrived in England and requested an audience with the master. ‘So,’ said George, ‘we had a pleasant enough chat, though a good deal of the time I had very little idea of what she was saying. And then we went upstairs to listen to some Bessie Smith in my bedroom. At that point she undressed and invited me to get into bed with her. I said, “I’m afraid you’ll be disappointed,” and indeed all I could produce was a length of old bent hose. But then I suggested she might wank herself off which she did, delightfully noisily, and finally I managed to get half-hard and produce a small reluctant jet of moisture. Which seemed to delight her.’
‘Have you tried Viagra?’ I asked. ‘I can get you some if you want.’
But the old master looked tired. ‘I might,’ he said. ‘But no, I don’t think I can be bothered . . .’
Work for George Melly and Digby Fairweather’s Half-Dozen was definitely beginning to slacken off. Return visits to previously sold-out venues were sparser than I might have expected. But nevertheless, as winter turned to spring, we returned to old haunts including the Concorde Club Eastleigh for Cole Mathieson, Barrow-in-Furness, as well as the Mick Jagger Centre, Dartford, the Gordon Craig Theatre at Stevenage (where Bob Bustance had fixed jazz concerts for over thirty years), Cranleigh in Surrey, the Dartmouth Music Festival and of course the Bull’s Head in Barnes, that west London jazz sanctuary, for good friend Dan Fleming. And the Half-Dozen was starting to work slowly but surely as an independent unit too at the Bull’s Head, Huntingdon Hall, Worcester and The Sands at Gainsborough. Much as we enjoyed our shows with George it was good to work as a solo act.
In 2005, and again in 2006, Digby Fairweather’s Half-Dozen had fairly and squarely landed the Birmingham Jazz Award for top small group of the year. Several of my fellow players – Julian, Len Skeat and in 2006 Dominic Ashworth – had also won individual awards within their instrumental category. These achievements met with indifference from the oh-so-trendy jazz press but we didn’t care. Whatever the papers said, or didn’t choose to say, we knew that we were good; that our stage presentation was as polished as any of the better-established bands and that we could do more things well than most of our senior bill toppers. But without George it was still hard to find our way as a single act into most top venues. And as Jack Higgins was quick to affirm we needed that star name.
I was still busy enough anyhow with other projects. Though my close friend of over thirty years, trombonist Pete Strange, had died in 2004, his creation, the Great British Jazz band, was still playing odd concerts with Don Lusher as our new lead trombonist. And, despite Don’s advancing difficulties with mild dementia, the Best of British Jazz was still playing too. Most of the great originals – Jack Parnell, Lennie Bush and of course Kenny Baker – had either retired or died. But nonetheless we continued to appear at favourite venues with a show which, though less polished than Kenny’s great original (or indeed my own Half-Dozen), still managed to be a crowd pleaser.
Meantime, the indefatigable Jack Higgins had devised yet another new presentation. Simply to be called The Sounds of Jazz, it was to feature George, the Half-Dozen and Jacqui Dankworth who had duetted with George on The Ultimate Melly. Like most of the rest of us, George had fallen for Jacqui immediately. Exquisitely and classically beautiful with a frank open-throated laugh and a face that could relapse with striking suddenness from mirth to something close to introspective pain, she was also, in all of our opinions, Britain’s greatest young jazz singer, with a degree in drama from RADA for good measure. We made our debut at the Anvil Theatre, Basingstoke, on 25 May 2006 to a full crowd and Jacqui was marvellous, collaborating with the Half-Dozen’s vocal group for a revised version of my blues ‘Babe’ and touching the audience’s hearts with a deeply felt reading of Burke and Van Heusen’s ‘But Beautiful’. The only problem came at the end of the concert when, after a minimal rehearsal, George and Jacqui were due to reprise their triumphant recorded success with ‘Let’s Call the Whole Thing Off’ before a packed audience.
‘You say neither,’
Jacqui began, looking at George expectantly. He leaned forward.
‘Pardon?’
‘And I say neither,’ Jacqui finished quickly. ‘You say either . . .’
George stared back in silence with a broad smile.
‘And I say either,’ sang Jacqui, catching the ball again. Which she continued to do until the song came to a premature and mildly hysterical end.
It was probably the pressure of these unavoidable situations that made me less tolerant than I might have been of George’s on-stage eccentricities. A regular intake of vodka did nothing to help the situation either. But at this point George and I were heading for a brief period of dissension. He had spotted that I could become bullish after an intake of what I had christened ‘Dr Smirnoff’s prescription’ and had teased me about it for some time, a forefinger teasingly jerked towards my full on-stage glass discreetly hidden behind a microphone-stand. But now, as the dementia slowly began to take hold, he became critical of our show. Why did our drummer Nick Millward play so loudly? And, come to that, the rest of us too? Why were my announcements so long? Why couldn’t we play a more traditional style; maybe introduce a tuba or banjo? And our arrangements, now tightly designed with the occasional reference to contemporary styles, bore little resemblance to the revivalist jazz that he had grown up with and which plainly still beat through his heart like an anthem.
It hadn’t always been the case. To begin with George had adored the heavy passionate electric blues that Dominic Ashworth could wring from his guitar and I loved it too. But two more traditionally minded members of the rhythm section felt otherwise and had made no secret of their feelings. Ever the fair and gracious arbitrator, Dominic determined to hold an interview with our star away from the conflicting opinions surrounding him.
‘George,’ he had said on one return journey, ‘can I ask you something?’
On the Road with George Melly Page 9