Chris Hayes

Chris Hayes, the former Melody Maker journalist, covered an extraordinary array of artists, from Louis Armstrong to Jimi Hendrix, during a career that spanned five decades of popular music history. He became one of the most endearing characters at the pioneering weekly music paper, familiar to generations of musicians, readers and colleagues.

Hayes joined the MM as a junior reporter in 1934 during the heyday of British dance bands, when the paper became known as "the Bible of the Profession". The Melody Maker, launched in January 1926, was the world's first magazine to deal exclusively with jazz and dance music. Recalling the MM's early days Hayes wrote: "It advised, instructed, encouraged and fought for musicians with unfailing conviction, helping to achieve better conditions, higher salaries and greater respect."

Chris Hayes was born in Brixton, south London, in 1916. He cherished ambitions to become a journalist while at school and, encouraged by his father, began writing letters to newspapers on any subject that took his fancy. He left school aged 14 in 1930 and worked briefly in a warehouse. His father was unemployed and his mother scrubbed floors at the Daily Sketch, but through a family friend, Hayes obtained an interview with the managing director of Odhams Press. He was subsequently given a job as office boy at Melody Maker, in Covent Garden, London. After writing an anonymous letter to the MM, stoutly defending Louis Armstrong's heavily criticised July 1933 appearance at the Holborn Empire, Hayes was offered a job as a junior reporter by the editor Percy Brooks. The paper was about to "go weekly" and urgently needed more editorial staff.

Hayes wrote his first MM news story in October 1934, about the bandleader Jack Payne. Armed with his notebook, camera and porkpie hat, Hayes roamed Archer Street in Soho, where musicians gathered to exchanged gigs and gossip. He soon became a familiar figure at London's theatres, restaurants, hotels and clubs, where dance music was an integral part of West End nightlife.

He was promoted to senior reporter and photographer with his own column, a forerunner of "The Raver" called "Chatter". He profiled the men with batons and bow ties who were the matinee idols of the Thirties, including Henry Hall, Charlie Kunz, Lew Stone, Roy Fox and Ambrose. Hayes explained:

Fan worship was known long before pop came on the scene. When Cyril Stapleton was playing violin for Jack Payne it was often necessary to call out mounted police to control the crowds of fans who gathered at the stage door.

In July 1940 Hayes married his first wife, Madeline, known as Peggy. However, she was taken ill and hospitalised. At the outbreak of the Second World War Hayes had joined the Police War Reserve and later the Royal Artillery. As a result of a transfer he escaped the bombing of the Odhams Press building which destroyed the MM office. The disruption meant the married couple were unable to set up house together. Madeline later died, at the age of 29 in October 1949. While in hospital in Brentwood, Essex, she had made friends with another patient, Winifred Archer. When Chris and Winifred met they also became friends and eventually married in June 1950. In 1955 ill-health forced Hayes to move to the South Coast with his wife and they lived in Saltdean near Brighton before moving to the Isle of Wight and then to Maidstone, Kent.

Hayes continued to write for the Melody Maker regularly until his retirement in January 1981, which he later described as a "miserable goodbye". After 50 years' service to the paper and despite being the longest-serving member, he was virtually ignored by a staff for whom even the Beatles were consigned to history, let alone Henry Hall and Ambrose:

I received no parting gift from the management and it was a bitter disappointment. My farewell "party" was a beer and a sandwich in a grotty pub. Before the war we used to produce 80-page MMs with an editorial staff of six. In the Eighties there were about 12 reporters and I was aghast at their attitude and their attire.

And yet, while the veteran MM man now seemed like an anachronism, he served the paper well right to the end with his old-fashioned values and accurate reporting. Attempting to interview the notoriously tetchy Dizzy Gillespie, Hayes knocked on the bebopper's hotel door and innocently asked what make of trumpet he played. Gillespie roared with rage and threatened to hit the MM man over the head with his horn. "But as I ducked, I noted that he played a Conn with a small mouthpiece . . ."

He was once sent in pursuit of the missing Shadows' star Jet Harris and found him in a pub in Brighton. He telegrammed back to the office: "I believe he is inside, drinking heavily . . ." The latest crop of MM rock critics would be highly amused to hear the veteran reporter still on the phone in the office, diligently compiling his weekly "Expert Advice" column (later renamed "Any Questions"). Eric Clapton, Keith Emerson and Pete Townshend were among those who received the third degree from the voice from the Thirties. "Now look here, Eric old boy, what kind of guitar were you playing last night? How do you spell that? G-re-t-s-c-h." When the rockers dared send him up he'd respond with a deadpan: "Oh I see, old boy, that's a joke is it?"

When a reader wanted to know how Pete Townshend coped with "bleeding fingers while playing guitar" Townshend told Hayes he had a tumbler of whisky at hand so he could put his fingers in it after the gig. He swore that "cured the pain". Hayes applied the same matter-of-fact approach to Jimi Hendrix, who was as courteous as any bandleader from the Thirties, and to the jazz saxophonist Roland Kirk, who was delighted to talk about his bizarre choice of instruments, including the Manzello and Stritch.

Although the post-punk MM meant his services were no longer properly valued or appreciated, Hayes continued to write for local newspapers and the magazine Memory Lane. He published a number of books privately, including Dance Music at the Savoy Hotel 1920-1927 (1988), The Story Behind Two Hundred Popular Signature Tunes (1989) and Leader of the Band (1994), as well as Melody Maker Memories (1992), a witty account of the pre-war era.

His wife Winifred said:

The Melody Maker was his life's work. He loved the paper but most of all he loved the music. He always considered it to be an honour to be able to write about and meet his heroes.

Chris Welch