Alan George Heywood Melly (17 August 1926 – 5 July 2007) was an English jazz and blues singer, critic, writer, and lecturer.

[4] Melly was educated at Stowe School, Buckinghamshire where he discovered his interest in modern art, jazz and blues and started coming to terms with his sexuality.

A frequent visitor to Liverpool's Sefton Park near his home, he often entered its tropical Palm House and there chatted to wounded soldiers from a nearby military hospital.

It was the incongruity of this sight, men smoking among the exotic plants, dressed in their hospital uniforms and usually missing a limb, that he felt he later recognised in the work of the Surrealists.

As he related in his autobiography Rum, Bum and Concertina, he was crestfallen to discover that he would not be sent to a ship and was thus denied the "bell-bottom" uniform he desired.

In January 1963, the British music magazine NME reported that the biggest trad jazz event to be staged in Britain had taken place at Alexandra Palace.

The event included Alex Welsh, Diz Disley, Acker Bilk, Chris Barber, Kenny Ball, Ken Colyer, Monty Sunshine, Bob Wallis, Bruce Turner, Mick Mulligan and Melly.

While many British musicians of the time treated jazz and blues with almost religious solemnity, Melly rejoiced in their more bawdy side, and this was reflected in his choice of songs and exuberant stage performances.

His passion for fly-fishing never dwindled and in later life he sold several important paintings (by Magritte and Picasso) enabling him to buy a mile of land by the River Usk.

[17] Melly was still active in music, journalism, and lecturing on surrealism and other aspects of modern art until his death, despite worsening health problems such as vascular dementia,[18] incipient emphysema, and lung cancer.

[19] His encouragement and support to gallery owner Michael Budd led to a posthumous exhibition for the modern abstract artist François Lanzi.

He often equated his dementia to a quite amusing LSD trip, and took a lot of pleasure from his deafness, which he said made many boring conversations more interesting.

The hearse was led by a jazz band, including Kenny Ball on trumpet, playing a New Orleans funeral march.

[22] In 2018 writer, musician and film maker Chris Wade made a documentary about Melly entitled The Certainty of Hazard, featuring his wife Diana, son Tom, and various friends and associates.