Slowing Down by George Melly Page B

fans who listen intently so as to grasp and understand what theyare hearing. A mainstream attraction fills the club with those who, as adolescents, wound up their gramophones to listen with admiring attention to the innovative masters of their youth. As for classicbop, its publicare those who were originally drawn to Charlie Parker and his ilk after the war.
    And us? Well, we are the only representatives of what the bald midget at the desk called ‘some little Dixie group’, not that either John Chilton or Digby Fairweather would thank you for that. ‘Dixie’ John’s quartet was indeed small, but for Digby, with seven musicians including himself, that ‘little’ is surely an understatement.
    The Christmas season fills Soho with ravers of both sexes and quite a number stagger into Ronnie’s, which is open late. There are office parties too, youngsters whose parents or even grandparents talk warmly of me, and above all, contemporaries or near-contemporaries who often open a conversation with the dread phrase, ‘I haven’t seen you since…’ As ‘since’ tends to be far away and long ago, I use John’s mild put-down (although with a friendly smile), ‘You didn’t like it much, then?’
    This audience can be volatile and thoughtless and in the past those who want to hear have frequently complained about the steady volume of conversation (being deaf I was less aware of it), but I must say now that I sit in a chair to sing at them, they have become in the main much quieter.
    There are exceptions, of course. The night the din drove the already depressed Ronnie from the stage at the beginning of his jokes was one such, but it can be handled. John Chilton gave a devastating riposte to a single lout shouting the odds: ‘Don’t pay any attention. It’s his first visit to London and he is over-excited by the big red buses.’
    These days I have evolved my own formula for vocal mayhem. I start off by saying, ‘This is not a church. There is no reason why you shouldn’t talk, but I would like to remind you that most of the audience have paid to listen to the music, so I would ask you to do it quietly. There is also a downstairs bar opposite the ladies, where you can talk as loudly as you like. Now I have no power or right to enforce my request, but if you choose to ignore it, well FUCK YOU!’
    I only had to resort to this once in 2003, but what was very encouraging was that the majority of the audience burst into prolonged applause and it did the trick. It may have had something to do with me being old and wearing an eye-patch, or having been described by the Daily Express as ‘a national treasure’ and elsewhere as ‘a legend’ (I thought legends had to be dead, but no matter), or the fact that someone so old and crumbly could shout a four-letter word at them, or perhaps my singing had improved. Certainly another factor is that Digby and his Hot Six are all fine musicians playing their leader’s arrangements with complete conviction and swinging like the clappers. At all events, for the rest of both sets you could hear a pin drop. (Where did that cliché come from?)
    Ronnie himself was not above a critical reaction but it was usually directed at the artistes he’d booked rather than at the noisy audience. One such was an excellent jazz cabaret singer and pianist called Blossom Dearie. Ms Dearie is a diminutive blonde of a certain age with a quiet, high-pitched voice and great determination in getting her own way. Her material is both literate and sophisticated – my favourite is a song called ‘Bernie My Attorney’ about her gay lawyer –

    ‘The audience burst into prolonged applause… It may have had something to do with me being old and wearing an eye-patch’
    but she insists on certain rigid conditions. One is no smoking during her act – not unreasonable for a singer. Ella Fitzgerald also insisted on it. Two is total silence all the time she is on stage. This, at Ronnie’s, is more difficult to