The SS Empire Windrush, which sailed from the Caribbean in 1948, is commonly associated in modern British consciousness with the recruitment of much-needed labour for London Transport and the National Health Service, while at the same time solving unemployment problems in the sunny islands of the Caribbean.

To jazz followers, however, it meant the arrival of Jamaican alto saxophonist, Joe Harriott and other modern musicians who rode the wave of emigration to find professional opportunities in England.

However, Harriott and his fellow-travellers were not the first to do this. The music of the Pre-War jazz age became a major form of popular music via dance bands, and this was due to an earlier influx of Caribbean jazz musicians who had enriched the British swing scene.

Most of these earlier jazz pioneers were linked to the ill-fated late-1930s dance orchestra of Ken Johnson, considered by many to be the 'swingiest' swing band in Britain.

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