Melody Maker

Melody Maker was a British weekly music magazine, one of the world's earliest music weeklies; according to its publisher, IPC Media, the earliest. In January 2001, it was merged into "long-standing rival" (and IPC Media sister publication) New Musical Express.

It was founded in 1926 by Leicester-born composer and publisher Lawrence Wright as the house magazine for his music publishing business, often promoting his own songs. Two months later it had become a full scale magazine, more generally aimed at dance band musicians, under the title The Melody Maker and British Metronome. It was published monthly from the basement of 19 Denmark Street in London (soon relocating to 93 Long Acre), and the first editor was the drummer and dance-band leader Edgar Jackson (1895-1967).

Jackson instigated a jazz column, which gained in credibility once it was taken over by Spike Hughes in 1930. This was later developed into "Jazz Corner", edited by Sinclair Traill and then Max Jones, one of the leading British proselytizers for jazz. There were regular reports on jazz happenings in the United States, and the magazine secured the first British interview with Louis Armstrong in July 1932 while he was over for a visit.

Odhams Press took over the magazine in 1928, and the format was changed to a 16 page weekly newspaper in 1933. Ray Sonin joined the staff in 1939, progressing to news editor and then 10 years as managing editor until 1951. Sonin subsequently joined the New Musical Express.

The Melody Maker (MM) was slow to cover rock and roll and lost ground to the New Musical Express (NME), which had begun in 1952. MM launched its own weekly singles chart (a top 20) on 7 April 1956, and an LPs charts in November 1958, two years after the Record Mirror had published the first UK Albums Chart. From 1964, the paper led its rival publications in terms of approaching music and musicians as a subject for serious study rather than merely entertainment. Staff reporters such as Chris Welch and Ray Coleman applied a perspective previously reserved for jazz artists to the rise of American-influenced local rock and pop groups, extending the reach of music criticism.

On 6 March 1965, MM called for the Beatles to be honoured by the British state. This duly happened on 12 June that year, when all four members of the group (Harrison, Lennon, McCartney, and Starr) were appointed as members of the Order of the British Empire. By the late 1960s, MM had recovered, targeting an older market than the teen-oriented NME. MM had larger and more specialised advertising; soon-to-be well-known groups would advertise for musicians. It ran pages devoted to "minority" interests like folk and jazz, as well as detailed reviews of musical instruments.

A 1968 Melody Maker poll named John Peel best radio DJ, attention which John Walters said may have helped Peel keep his job despite concerns at BBC Radio 1 about his style and record selection.

Starting from the mid-1960s, critics such as Welch, Richard Williams, Michael Watts and Steve Lake were among the first British journalists to shed an intellectual light on such popular music artists as Steely Dan, Cat Stevens, Led Zeppelin, Pink Floyd and Henry Cow.^{[citation needed]}