A mix of concert footage with Dennis Bovell’s dub band, interviews and chat, archive footage of St. Vincent (Shake Keane’s home island), Jamaica (Linton Kwesi Johnson’s home island), Notting Hill and Archer Street in the West End.
In 6 short parts that seemed to follow on from each other when I watched on YouTube.
Linton, Shake and bassist Coleridge Goode are extensively featured and there’s also a shorter chat section with English pianist/bandleader Michael Garrick. Some interesting discussion about Joe Harriott also.
I missed this completely when the BBC first aired it in 1992 so it’s good to see it now.
Found on YouTube: 1992 programme featuring Linton Kwesi Johnson and poet/jazz saxophonist Shake Keane
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Idiot that I plainly am, I called Shake Keane a saxophonist in the OP. He was of course a trumpeter/flugelhornist.
Too late to change it now.
Shake Keane, Coleridge Goode and Michael Garrick all sadly gone now.
Shake Keane was a new name for me.
A jazz musician and poet.
Wikipedia has a very informative page about his life. He played a lot in Norway and died in Oslo while on tour.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shake_Keane
There’s a discography on the British Bebop site.
https://archive.is/20130223153020/http://vzone.virgin.net/davidh.taylor/keane.htm
He did session work with Lord Kitchener and played with Joe Harriott & John Mayer’s pioneering Indo Jazz Fusions in 1966.
This is a nice album.
In that documentary he talks about when he first encountered reggae, returning to London after a good few years working in Germany with Kurt Edelhagen’s bands.
Talks about “Love Of The Common People” playing as he walked down the street.
Here he is in Germany playing with Kurt Edelhagen in 1966.
Shake was certainly quite a globe-trotter.
Kurt Edelhagen sounds worthy of a proper listen. That’s quite a band!
There’s a 3-CD set of Kurt’s unreleased WDR* Jazz recordings that’s been available since March, featuring guests such as Tubby Hayes, Toots Thielemans, Kenny Wheeler, Gordon Beck, Philly Joe Jones, Albert Mangelsdorf and Mark Murphy. 40 tracks, about 3½ hours of music. £23.06 from Amazon.
*WestDeutscher Rundfunk. The German public broadcasting institution in North-Rhine Westphalia, based in Köln.