BIOGRAPHY • HOME • GIGS • CONTACT • BOOKING  • HISTORY • PHOTOS

 

BIOGRAPHY

His earliest memories are of warbling along to hits of the 40s and 50s with his mother, who was an aspiring singer. He sang at school assemblies, at sing-alongs supporting his high school rugby team, and eventually he sang for his classmates when he picked up a guitar from a still-life arrangement at art school in Cape Town.

He borrowed a friend's f-hole guitar to ward off boredom after completing his homework assignments at art school. "The theoretical subjects, anatomy and art history, kept me occupied at home for a part of my time, the rest of the "alone time" was spent teaching myself to play guitar ... the term, fingerpicking, had yet to enter my lexicon, but that's what I was doing. Malaguena was the first tune I figured out by ear."

"One summer afternoon hunkered down out of sight on the balcony of our suburban flat I sang some songs, earning applause from a girl across the way." The applause was gratifying and ever since then he practiced and discovered folk music after transferring to the Johannesburg School of Art.

He transferred to art school in Johannesburg and some nights he dropped into the Troubadour Coffeehouse and became a denizen, hanging out almost every night and eventually became a waiter just to be there all the time, and all the while studying the guitar-picking styles of the singers playing on the little black stage with the hangman's noose suspended from the ceiling. He avidly watched and studied the regular performers: Des Lindberg and Keith Blundell, Leon & Mike, and others who stirred the attentive audiences. One night as he sang along, his loud harmony prompting British import Gary Bryden to pause in mid-song to invite Mel up on stage to sing with him. Mel never looked back, the bug had bitten him!

Soon after, Mel persuaded his art school comedian friend Mel Miller to join him at the Troubadour ... they sang their entire repertoire ...[ three songs] for manager, Keith Blundell, who promptly hired them to take over the Wednesday evening slot, which was soon to be vacated. The Mels played hooky, "bunking" art school for a month, and even then, when they took the stage at their first gig, they found they still had too few songs, so Mel Miller spontaneously filled in with the jokes and extremely funny stories he had been telling at art school. And thus their reputation as a folk-comedy duo took root.

Within a year, after featuring in the first Johannesburg Folk Festival concerts, they were signed to Columbia after being recorded with all the other performers for a compilation album. They had teamed up for the event with with Louis Meyer a banjo player. Soon after that, they left their day jobs to go pro, taking a residency at South Africa's top hotel, appearing as Mel & Mel. Their success in filling their own room six nights a week, prompted them to hire Julian Laxton as their lead-guitarist, with whom they made three albums and enjoyed a short but stellar career, during the time of the Beatles, Stones and the other 60s greats. (That's the short version of their group story... please visit www.melmelandjulian.com for more.

Nearly forty years later, Mel is still performing solo, writing and picking as enthusiastically as ever... and he is working on his first solo CD.

He loves performing in groups and writes and records with The Maple Street Project, a folk-rock quintet he co-founded in the western suburbs of Boston, and he also sings occasionally with RiverSong, a group dedicated to promoting conservation of waterways... watch this space for more developments.

 

 

AUTOBIOGRAPHY

After Mel, Mel & Julian broke up in 1967, I returned to live in Johannesburg to work and to resume my life as a 9-5 citizen. I hung out at the The Troubadour and soon was in the thick of the folk scene, making my way as a solo performer. My good friends Mike Dickman, Eric and Yonna Solomon, Andy Dillon, Colin Shamley, Estelle Orlin, Edie Niederlander and Keith Blundell and his family made my transition very comfortable. We played together a lot, hung out and listened to a lot of good music, and generally were very comfortable among "our own".

I was asked to feature at Pretoria's only folk club - The "Gorrelpot" (Afrikaans for Witch's Couldron) which later moved and was re-named "The Minstrel" and located near the University of Pretoria ... my good friend Theo Coetzee ran the place with a few other of the folk-faithful, in the heart of conservative Pretoria.

I became a favorite there over the next three years. That venue became the proving ground for my new-found confidence as a solo singer and guitar player.... I was forced to improve my guitar playing, (there wasn't Julian to rely on for his amazing lead work...) and I was soon well-regarded as a crowd pleaser and entertainer - even telling stories and jokes!

Out of that newfound prominence on the scene I was recommended by my good friend David Marks to try out for a play in Johannesburg, acting and singing in the literary stage review "What is Love?" in which I was hired to be the interlocutor, to link the various segments with song or spoken word. Still under contract to CBS, (Columbia South Africa). I was asked to record a single ... My first solo, "Mr. Nico" and the title song from "What is Love?" both written by David Marks. That recording session was memorable! ... I was backed up by my friends, the Rock & Roll group, The Bats. (I am told that I was the first South African folkie to record with a rock band, which would make me the first folk-rocker in South Africa?) Since then, there has been a long hiatus between recording sessions...

I emigrated to the United States in 1970, with a letter of recommendation to the president of Columbia Records in New York from the president of CBS in South Africa. A meeting was arranged with a producer at Epic Records, which went nowhere. The current trend was to record singer-songwriters, and I was not yet writing at that time... The experience was humbling and disappointing.

After moving north to Boston in 1972, while I was looking for a job in the advertising trade, I spent many of my idle hours playing guitar in my rented room reading, writing and doing plenty of thinking... and that's when the muse appeared. Words flowed onto paper, and soon I had a few songs to play and sing at the weekly Ceilidh hosted by Peter Johnson at Club Passim. The owners, Bob and Rae Anne Donlin liked my songs and my interpretations of some folk songs, so I became a regular at those weekly events, honing my material, and getting back into the folk scene. Lorraine Hammond, a regular would invite many of us back to her house to sing into the wee hours after Club Passim closed its doors for the night, and meeting and singing with other enthusiasts again nurtured my love for the folk genre.

I learned a lot from my fellow singers and pickers. And I still do... I was a lucky man, because Rae Ann Donlin must have coerced Bob, her laconic husband, (and iconic figure on the Boston folk scene), because I was invited to open for Sandy Bull, the world-music multi-instrumentalist when he came to town for a couple of nights.

And a few months later I was honored to be asked to be the opener for Rosalie Sorrels, "The Traveling Lady". And that gig was for four nights... a wonderful opportunity! Soon after that Bob Donlin attempted to persuade me to go back into folk music full time and offered to manage me. In retrospect, I wonder what might have happened if I had taken him up on his offer at that time, but marriage, children and work were the factors that kept my guitar, and the muse in the closet.

Now after many years, I have been out and performing my old and new songs once again. The joy and sense of fulfillment one achieves from performing one's own humble creations is truly remarkable. The realization that one might have something meaningful to express is even more empowering.

BIOGRAPHY • HOME • GIGS • CONTACT • BOOKING  • HISTORY • PHOTOS