Shake Keane

Born in St Vincent, Ellsworth Keane (1927-1997) was taught music from an early age by his father. He played trumpet in local dance bands, but many of his efforts as a teenager were devoted to his love of poetry. Schoolfriends nicknamed ‘Shakespeare’, which was soon shortened to ‘Shake’. He had poems published, and also worked as a schoolteacher.

In 1952, he travelled to the UK to study literature at London University. He also worked on BBC’s ‘Caribbean Voices’. At the same time he played with various jazz, calypso and highlifte outfits, making his first recordings as a bandleader in 1954. Working in a band led by Guyanese pianist Mike McKenzie that same year, Keane found himself alongside the Jamaican saxophonist, Joe Harriott, who would become his most important musical collaborator. The albums Freeform (1960) and Abstract (1961), featuring Pat Smythe, Coleridge Goode, Bobby Orr and Frank Holder, were a pioneering introduction of abstraction into British jazz. Keane’s interest in literature led him into a natural partnership with Michael Garrick in various jazz-poetry presentations. He worked in Germany in the late 1960s with Kurt Edelhagen and the Kenny Clarke-Francy Boland big band.

In 1972, he was back in St Vincent, where he was appointed Minister of Culture before being placed in New York as cultural attache in 1980. He returned to music in 1989 to honour his friend Joe Harriott with a memorial tour (alongside Coleridge Goode, Bobby Orr and Michael Garrick. He moved to Norway in the 1990s, continuing to write and perform until shortly before his death.

Key Recordings:
With Joe Harriott
In My Condition (Columbia 1961) EP