So the 'Snakehips' Johnson Orchestra, co-led with Leslie Thompson was born in the spring of 1936, touring cinemas and other venues throughout the country. By early 1937, the Orchestra was playing at the Old Florida Club in the West End, owned and managed by the former Duke Ellington Orchestra vocalist, Adelaide Hall. Thompson earned at least £20 per week but, although he was the original backer and practical organiser of the group, Johnson and his manager legally formalised a joint ownership of the Orchestra with the result that Thompson was cut out of any financial interest. This took place just as the Orchestra was being scouted by a BBC producer for broadcasts.

Many of the players resigned in support of Thompson and the Orchestra would have been decimated, but Ken Johnson retained Jiver Hutchinson and he had already made overtures to other musicians in the Caribbean. The quality newcomers, Barriteau, Wilkins, and Williams, were summoned to Britain and sailed on banana boats. These strong players helped maintain the Johnson Orchestra's reputation as superlative swingers.

The Johnson Orchestra's BBC radio programmes, broadcast from the Café de Paris, could not have happened at a better time. The night spot was a magnificent, expensive supper club, featuring an oval, mirrored room with a spacious dance floor. A pair of curved staircases surrounded the bandstand and, from these, the exclusive clientele entered the basement premises.

In 1999, the British Library Sound Archive received a collection of Johnson's 1938 radio broadcasts. No doubt Ken Johnson understood that singers added variety to his Orchestra's show, but he only hired a female singer for BBC broadcasts, as the Corporation then had a requirement for two vocal numbers per half hour of such programming.

The commercial disc issues made for British Decca (1938) and HMV (1940) were just that: an attempt to reach the generic buyers of dance band records. The British record industry was not ready to categorise Ken Johnson and His West Indian Dance Orchestra as a jazz market act, but rather as a mainstream dance band.

On 8 March 1941 the Snakehips Johnson Orchestra was still holding down the prestigious and lucrative spot at The Cafe de Paris, when London suffered aerial bombardment and the club suffered two direct hits. While some musicians were seriously injured, Ken Johnson, saxophonist Dave 'Baba' Williams and many of the club's dancers died in the attack. Read about the arrangements made for Johnson's funeral and correspondences with his mother about his memorial service.

The Orchestra, of course, dispersed but most musicians were hired by various white bandleaders. Carl Barriteau, Leslie 'Jiver' Hutchinson, Dave Wilkins, Joe Deniz and the Birmingham drummer, Tommy Bromley, all appeared on the famous November 1941 'First English Public Jam Session Recording', held at the Abbey Road studios. Some of the musicians made private recordings and there were a few small group sessions that were issued commercially, such as those by the Cyril Blake's Jigs' Club Band and the Spirits of Rhythm Sextet. This was led by Joe Deniz's brother, Frank, who was also a guitarist. 'Jiver' Hutchinson eventually revived the all-Black big band concept, which toured throughout the 1940s. His daughter, jazz vocalist Elaine Delmar, became a favoured star of Ronnie Scott's Club in Soho.

Fortunately a number of Ken 'Snakehips' Johnson's major players were interviewed in their later years for the British Library Sound Archive's Oral History of Jazz in Britain Project. These recordings are available for study in the Listening Service at the Library. Such life stories complement the Library's holdings of periodicals documenting the era, such as the Melody Maker, many jazz-specific publications, and the BBC's own Radio Times. The Humanities 2 Reading Room also provides information on vintage commercially-issued discs by way of record company catalogues, the Gramophone, and the like.

The surge of Post-War Caribbean immigration would later enrich the London jazz milieu, with the arrival of Jamaican-born alto saxophonist, Joe Harriott, guitarist, Ernest Ranglin, and the St Vincent-born trumpeter, Shake Keane, among others. But it was the pioneering black British swing artists who set the stage for the stars of more recent times.

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