George Melly At The L.S.E.
by Robin Kidson

Reading Yvonne Mallett's memory of George Melly (here) triggered a memory for Robin Kidson too:

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It seems everyone has a memory of George Melly. Here’s mine. In the early 1970s, I was a student at the London School of Economics. The School had a flourishing jazz society which I quickly joined and squeezed myself on to its committee. In my second year at the School, I was the Society’s Chair.

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Each term, we organised an extensive range of both lunchtime and evening concerts featuring the cream of British jazz at the time – Skidmore, Osborne, Surman, the Brotherhood of Breath, Mike Gibbs (with Jack Bruce on bass).... We also put on a programme of lunchtime record recitals when we would invite a prominent jazz person to come and give a talk, illustrated by records, on a particular topic. So, for instance, Ian Carr came and talked about Miles Davis, Alexis Korner recalled his part in the birth of the British blues scene, Richard Williams (then deputy editor of the Melody Maker) talked about the European avant-garde, and Bill Oddie chatted amiably and played tracks from his record collection. No-one wanted a fee, not even expenses. They were happy to be bought a drink in a local pub or the Student Union bar after the session.

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And then we had George Melly. He came to talk about Bessie Smith and arrived clutching a couple of vinyl LPs (it was all vinyl in those days). I had booked a room near the Students Union bar which turned out to be a fortuitous coincidence. I’d also booked one of the School’s record players. As with our other speakers, George wanted no payment and we did not charge for entry. We ended up with a pretty large audience packed into a relatively small room.

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Before he started, I asked George if he’d like a drink – “water, orange juice, tea, coffee?” “That’s very kind of you”, he replied, “I’ll have a whisky if you wouldn’t mind. Double would be nice. Neat”. I popped into the Students Union bar only a few steps away and bought him a double whisky. He began his talk by knocking back the whisky in one gulp. “Another one?”, I asked tentatively. “Ooh, yes please”. Throughout his talk, he drank one double whisky after another, with members of the Jazz Society committee pooling their limited resources to pay for them.

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He was both supremely entertaining and informative, going through Bessie Smith’s life and controversial death and explaining the socio-political context in which she lived and worked. He described her style, influence and her place in the history of jazz, blues and popular music more generally. All this was illustrated by tracks from his LPs. He began gently singing along to these tracks but gradually, the volume increased until we were treated to a full-throated performance, a thrilling Bessie Smith/George Melly duet. The audience lapped it up.

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I’d booked the room until 2 o’clock but George was fully into his stride by then and showed no sign of bringing things to a close. There was a tentative knock on the door. I opened it and there was Alan Day, one of the School’s Professors of Economics with a small group of eager looking students clutching their books, pens and files. He was one of my Economics class tutors so we knew each other vaguely. “Excuse me”, he said politely, “but this room is booked from 2 for my Economics class. Are you finishing now?” I offered my apologies and went back in and told George that he would have to wind things up – and quickly. George nodded but just carried on as before. A few minutes passed but then a very angry Professor Day came bursting in. “Mr. Kidson, I really must insist that you finish now. I’ve got a class to teach here”.

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At the time, George Melly was film critic for the Observer. It just so happened that Alan Day also wrote a weekly column for the Observer on current economic and business issues. I’m not sure if they recognised each other but, there I was, attempting to mediate between the film critic and economics correspondent of a national Sunday paper over who had the rights to a room at the London School of Economics.

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Anyway, we managed to bundle George out of the room and into the nearby Students Union bar followed by a large contingent from the audience. George continued to drink and entertain us in the bar for another half an hour or so, occasionally bursting into song, before leaving apparently unaffected by the double whiskies. Professor Day never mentioned the incident in all my subsequent classes with him. And nor did I.​

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Quite separately from Robin's memory of George, back in 2014 Allan Eves sent us this picture of a bar bill from a George Melly recording session at New Merlin's Caves in Clerkenwell. Allan says that he found it in an album sleeve for the George Melly LP Son Of Nuts that used to belong to his father. The bill, which is for a total of £704 and is signed by producer Derek Taylor covers two rehearsals and the recording. It includes 87 bottles of wine - giant size, three 18 gallon kegs of beer and various items of food and a fish and chip dinner! There appears to be no date on the bill, but we think Son Of Nuts, if that was the session, was recorded in 1973.​​