Here he is, the enfant terrible of British trad, caught in his early pomp as the band singer with the equally-rumbustious Mick Mulligan band, with a side-bar or two with Welsh's men, the hook for the album being the selection of performances linked to (supposedly) doom-laden outcomes. There's even a contemporary B&W cover shot of Melly contemplating a Yorick-style skull. What fun! Described as the ‘quintessential bohemian’, Melly was always an extrovert but a clever one, of course, skilled in many directions. This collection starts with his versions of ‘Frankie and Johnny’ and ‘I'm Down in The Dumps’, Melly's evocation of the Bessie Smith style, well-intentioned and (almost) authentic, with Fred Hunt's limpid piano foremost, momentarily making this listener forget the anomalous situation of a grown white man emulating a long-gone female blues star. And there's plenty more here of the same, Melly's self-confidence and the pleasing efficiency of the backings making these reiterations rather more bearable than I'd expected. Clarinettist Ian Christie was always worth hearing, as was trumpeter Mick Mulligan who had the hot Spanier-to-Louis style sorted, as evident on the rousing ‘Ding Dong Daddy’. You can't fault Melly for trying and keeping the flag flying for classic blues, this eventually morphing into a separate career for himself as a jazz vaudevillian, mixing his blues with novelties and jazz songs. Scattered among these revived singles and long-overlooked EPs, 26 tracks in all, there's an engaging quartet of Frank Crumit songs, including the classic ‘Abdul Abulbul Amir’, a four-million seller for Crumit way back