With the Malcolm Furlow post I’ve started to think again about some of the lost - or maybe just under appreciated - roots of model railroading. I’ll get back to Furlow, but I’ve been wondering again about Gil Mellé because of something Furlow wrote.
There’s about a 10 year period from 1957 to 1967 where Mellé recorded and released no records, but as readers here know he was becoming a major presence in model railroading. The various biographies I’ve been able to find online don’t go into what he was up to during those years. Maybe there’s something in print. I’m thinking of putting together an integrated timeline that shows his transition from jazz musician to model railroader to musician again. I'll combine whatever I find music-wise with his model railroading publication list.
I noted Malcolm Furlow wrote that he believed going into model railroading was a “natural extension of my music career”. I wonder if Gil Mellé thought the same, or maybe he entered model railroading for different reasons? I wonder if, like Tom Daniel, railroading was an early interest, and Mellé for some similar reasons decided to return to it? Maybe I’ll never find out, but maybe there are some clues out there.
So, timeline. It looks like the last album Mellé recorded and released before his long hiatus from music was Quadrama in 1957. The album is on the Prestige label, # PRLP 7097. On it he plays baritone sax. I don’t own the album, but I’m trying to track down either an LP or CD for a reasonable price. Although, on YouTube I did find this recording of the piece Quadrama, that Wikipedia tells me is the very last track on the Quadrama album.
The last track of the last album before hiatus. Significant? I doubt it, but I don’t know. Here it is for your listening pleasure:
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