Ken "Snakehips" Johnson

rdf:langString Ken "Snakehips" Johnson

rdf:langString Ken Johnson

rdf:langString Ken Johnson

rdf:langString Café de Paris, London, United Kingdom

rdf:langString Kenrick Reginald Hijmans Johnson

rdf:langString Swing band leader and dancer

rdf:langString Snakehips

rdf:langString Kenrick Reginald Hijmans Johnson (10 September 1914 – 8 March 1941), known as Ken "Snakehips" Johnson, was a swing band leader and dancer. He was a leading figure in black British music of the 1930s and early 1940s before his death while performing at the Café de Paris, London, in the Blitz during the Second World War. Johnson was born in Georgetown, British Guiana (present-day Guyana). He showed some musical ability, but his attraction to dancing was opposed by his father, who wished him to have a career in medicine. He was schooled in Britain, but instead of continuing on to university, he travelled to New York, perfecting dance moves and immersing himself in the vibrant jazz scene in Harlem. He returned and set up the West Indian Dance Orchestra, a nearly all-black swing band, with Leslie Thompson, a Jamaican musician. In 1937 he legally took over the band, causing Thompson and several musicians to leave. He filled the vacancies with musicians from the Caribbean, and the band's popularity grew. From 1938 the band began broadcasting on BBC Radio, recorded their first discs and appeared in an early television broadcast. Increasingly popular, they were employed as the house band at the Café de Paris, an upmarket and fashionable nightclub located in a basement premises below a cinema. A German bombing raid on London in March 1941 hit the cinema, killing at least 34 and injuring dozens more. Johnson and one of the band's saxophonists were among those killed; several other band members were injured. The West Indian Dance Orchestra were the leading swing band in Britain at the time, well-known through their radio broadcasts, and popular, but their impact was more social than musical. As an all-black orchestra playing the most up-to-date music of the time, Johnson was seen as a pioneer for black musical leaders in the UK. When the band broke up after Johnson's death, the members had an impact on the nature and sound of British jazz. Johnson was tall, elegant, and modelled himself professionally on Cab Calloway. In 1940 he began a relationship with Gerald Hamilton, a man twenty years older than he. After Johnson's death Hamilton never travelled without a framed photograph of him, always referring to him as "My Husband".

rdf:langString Snakehips

rdf:langString Kenrick Reginald Hijmans Johnson