SEVENTIETH ANNIVERSARY OF THE DEATH IN WARTIME BOMBING OF STAR BANDLEADER/DANCER KEN “SNAKEHIPS” JOHNSON
It was Saturday 8th March 1941 ..... seventy years ago ..... the Second World War was in full flow ..... the “Blitz” on London was at its height .... and the bombs were falling to deadly effect in the West End entertainment district. Yet the young and glamorous felt themselves to be safe as they dined, danced and cuddled at the fashionable Cafe in Paris in Coventry Street, just off Leicester Square. The venue was billed as being “the safest ... restaurant in town, 20 feet below ground”. The band was ten minutes into their act. They swung into the popular tune “Oh Johnny, oh Johnny (How you can love)”. Then there was an immense blinding blue flash. When the smoke cleared a good number of the performers and clientele lay horribly mangled – and at least thirty were dead. The latter included the charismatic bandleader/dancer Ken “Snake-hips” Johnson, one of the most popular entertainers of the day ... one of the several good black entertainers of that time whose story is rarely told today.
Kenrick Reginald Huymans Johnson was born on 10th September 1914 into a well-to-do family in British Guiana, then a colony on the South American mainland – now Guyana. His father, a prominent doctor, had plans for him to make a career in the medical profession. After studying at Queens College in Georgetown, young 15 year-old Kenrick was sent to the William Borlase Grammar School at Marlow, Buckinghamhire, England, and then read medicine at Edinburgh University. He was adept at sports, representing his school at cricket and football at which his 6 ft 4 ins height was well-suited to his position as goalkeeper. Nevertheless Johnson was attracted primarily to music. African American entertainers such as Florence Mills, Alberta Hunter, Paul Robeson, Adelaide Hall, Elisabeth Welch and Ethel Waters enjoyed great popularity and set the yard-stick for the entertainment industry. The youngster sought out the celebrated American choreographer, then working in London, to teach him dance. Afterwards he appeared briefly in cabaret in Hollywood and film work in New York, where he became acquainted with the work of the great dance-bands of that era. Johnson’s nickname “Snake-hips” derived from his fluid, flexible style. His dress was always immaculate, often with a white suit and lapel flower. Ken joined Leslie Thompson’s (black) band The Emperors of Jazz in which because of his good looks and dancing ability he became the “front man” – a “dummy” conductor – while Thompson directed them musically. Co-incidentally the band are said to have had their first public engagement on 26th April 1936 at the Troxy cinema in Stepney, East London, which after having been closed for decades, is now the location for the leading African beauty contests and shows in the city. From New Year’s Eve 1936 The Emperors of Jazz opened a six-months residency at the Old Florida Club in the exclusive Mayfair district. Shortly afterwards, however, Johnson signed his own agency contract launching his solo career. Some of the Emperors of Jazz followed him into his new band, Ken Johnson and his Rhythm Swingers, which was augmented by musicians recruited direct from the Caribbean. Their success induced a flow of entertainers to come to London from that region. The name was changed in 1938 to that of The West Indian Orchestra, and within two years they were the top Swing band in the country. The Orchestra gained a mass following from their regular appearances on BBC Radio which was then in its hey-day. They adopted “Dear Old Southland” as their signature-turn on air while retaining “On the side of the street that’s sunny” for public shows. Johnson’s frenzied dancing, which was so energetic that at times he had to be told to calm down before performance, entranced tens of thousands more people during their punishing schedule of live performances at nightclubs, music-halls and cinemas. Promoters employed dancers to “spice up” shows which were otherwise restrained by the more formal restraints of public music. The West Indian Orchestra reached the pinnacle possible when it became the resident band at the Cafe de Paris in 1941. The club was nothing special in itself. The dance-floor was very small and was approached by a long, steep staircase leading four-floors down. However it was extremely fashionable, being patronised by what are now known as the “glitterati” as the “place to see and to be seen”. Aristocrats, celebrities, beautiful young girls and the fringe of the underworld “demi-monde” mixed with servicemen on leave and determined to pass what could be their last hours before being sent back to near certain death or injury in one memorable, hedonist experience. Death – of a more figurative kind – was in Johnson’s thoughts. He is quoted as saying: "I determined I'd make them like swing at the Café, or die in the attempt, and boy, I nearly died". Because dancing, unlike food and drink, was not rationed, the young and glamorous came to enjoy the crooners, cocktails and big bands of West End nightclubs as an escape from drab war-time restrictions and the terror of the bombing. Nowhere was more glamorous than the Cafe de Paris, and nobody more glamorous than Ken “Snake-hips” Johnson. By March the worst of the winter “blitz” seemed to over. Admittedly the raid that evening seemed to be a little heavier than usual – but who cared: it was just after 9 p.m., the Orchestra were playing “Oh Johnny”, Johnson was getting well into his act, there were beautiful women and handsome men aplenty, and four storeys below ground the war seemed to be a long way away. Flash – and the lights went out. And an era in entertainment went out with them. Special constable Ballard Berkeley, who later became an actor, was one of the first on the scene. He described seeing Johnson’s body decapitated but otherwise seemingly unmarked and the flower still in his lapel. Saxophonist David Williams and the head waiter were also among the dead. Two bombs had crashed down the airshaft and exploded – their fatal force magnified by the confined space of the club. For three hours rescuers combed through the shambles of bodies, the dead and the injured, shoes and garments, glasses and bottles, and a floor made slippery by shattered champagne. They had to fight off opportunistic looters who tried to prise or cut valuable rings from the fingers of the dead and dying. Kenrick Johnson was buried in the chapel of his alma mater, The Sir William Borlase Grammar School at Marlow, where there is a panel dedicated to him. Although The West Indian Orchestra died with their leader, black entertainers continued to play an important part in what was known as the “war effort”. An air-raid began while Adelaide Hall, one of the highest paid performers in the country, was singing at the Lewisham Hippodrome in South-east London. Because it was deemed to be too dangerous for the public to leave the theatre, Adelaide continued to sing, and to sing and to sing ..... until the “all clear” sounded at 3.45 a.m. next morning and it was safe for every one to ho home. Trumpeter and dancer Leslie “Jiver” Hutchinson founded his own band in 1944 with several of Johnson’s sidemen including some who had survived the bomb. He had been born in Jamaica in 1906 and came to London with the British West India Regiment in 1924 to play at the Empire Exhibition. Later he worked regularly with the top bands – even led his own for a while – at the top venues, and was a frequent guest performer for Johnson. His new band toured extensively until it was disbanded in 1949 when Hutchinson resumed his solo career. Nevertheless they came together afterwards for further bookings. “Jiver” was killed when the band bus left the road in Norfolk, England in November 1959. His daughter, Elaine Delmar, was then just at the start of her own successful singing career. Pianist Yorke de Souza, who was injured in the crash in which Hutchinson was killed, had also sustained an eye injury and severe cuts to his head from the bomb at the Cafe de Paris in 1941. Guitarist Joe Deniz, who was born in Cardiff in 1913, was another band member who survived injury then to continue his career. He was one of several brothers who attained recognition as musicians and played with top visiting American entertainers at the Nest Club in Kingly Street, Mayfair. Carl Barriteau, a Trinidadian whom Johnson invited to join his band in London, learned to play the clarinet and tenor horn in the orphanage to which he was sent when his father died. He, too, was injured in the bomb blast, but went on to play in several top bands and to lead his own. Barriteau toured Germany and further afield before settling in Australia where he died in 1998.
Leslie “Jiver” Hutchinson should not be confused with another entertainer of the same name popular at the same time: Leslie Arthur Julien Hutchinson, the celebrated “Hutch”, was a super-star of the 1930s who rubbed shoulders (and a little more) with royalty and whose days in the sun, and afterwards, were clouded by scandal. His career preceded slightly, shadowed and overlapped that of Ken “Snake-hips” Johnson. They were known at the same locations and to many of the same people. This Hutchinson was born on 7th March in Grenada, Eastern Caribbean. He took piano lessons as a child which stood him in good stead when as a teenager he had to keep himself while studying medicine in New York. That ability with his voice and good looks won him bookings at bars. For a while he played with the Henry “Broadway” Jones Band, a black band which played for white millionaires. While touring Florida he and other members were terrorised by the racist Ku Klux Klan. In 1924 “Hutch” moved to Paris where he became a friend and lover of Cole Porter, the famous composer of popular music. His bisexual affairs with celebrities such as songwriter Ivor Novello, film actresses Merle Oberon and Tallulah Bankhead, and, more ominously, members of the aristocracy and even royalty were the “talk of the time”. When he came to London to perform in the Rogers & Hart revue “One Damn Thing After Another” Hutchinson was an immediate success. Within a year he owned an exclusive Rolls Royce, lived in the very fashionable suburb Hampstead, and counted the Prince of Wales (the future King Edward VIII) among his closest acquaintances. “Hutch” possessed a relaxed poise and fluid style. He wore regularly a red carnation and white breast-pocket handkerchief with which he wiped his brow with conspicuous aplomb. It is said that he could have opened a florist’s shop with all the flowers showered on him. The Grenadian was a favourite with BBC radio audiences, for whom he broadcast often, played at the classiest clubs – including the Cafe de Paris, and he fathered seven children by six different mothers (one of whom he married). Nevertheless however famous he became “Hutch” was still always a black man. “Hutch” might command lavish fees for his concerts but he had to use the servants’ entrance to the premises at which he performed. That made him bitter, and counted very much against whim when public adulation. Sexual scandal was never far away. In 1930 he was pursued through the courts by the father of a “society” debutante whom he had made pregnant. Yet it was his perceived relationship with Lady Edwina Mountbatten which brought about his downfall. Her husband, Lord Mountbatten, was the king’s kinsman who would go on to become the last British Viceroy of India. A witness has described the lady kissing the entertainer’s neck and leading him behind closed doors, after which – it was said – a shriek was heard and she returned straightening her clothes. Lady Edwina is reported to have given Hutchinson presents of gold rings, watch and cigarette case. It was surmised that this was only the tip of the iceberg as far as his relationship with the “highest in the land” was concerned. “Hutch” was ostracised by Society and his name left out of newspaper reports. His activities and his career were denied publicity. Although his recordings sold in millions of copies when Hutchinson died of pneumonia in 1969 only a bare handful of people attended his funeral.
JOSEPHINE BAKER
There has never been anybody quite like her
She was the epitome of the sexotic
Fought bravely for so many things
To established society she was the epitome of the sexotic; she was married several times (occasionally unofficially) – and was said to be bisexual, she was a superlative dancer, a star comedienne and a more than competent singer; she was a Civil Rights campaigner and a decorated war heroine; she raised a multi-ethnic family of adopted children, and fell from riches back into poverty;she loved and betrayed love, she was adored and she was detested; and she was the best-known woman of African heritage of her generation. She was born a hundred years ago this month – and when she died she was given a state funeral. She was a legend in her own life-time, and beyond.
She was Josephine Baker.
Freda Josephine McDonald was born on 3rd June 1906 in St Louis, Missouri in humble circumstances to washerwoman Carrie McDonald and vaudeville drummer Eddie Carson – her father soon abandoned mother and daughter. As a child she “got by” by baby-sitting and cleaning houses for wealthy white families. Josephine dropped out of school at 12 years old and was working as a waitress a year later. While employed there she had a brief marriage to Willie Wells, and shortly afterwards married Willie Baker, from whom she parted soon afterwards but whose name she kept throughout her life. The youngster learned “the ropes” of the entertainment business by touring with The Jones Family Band and The Dixie Steppers. Yet when she auditioned to be a chorus girl in the production Shuffle Along she was rejected for being “too skinny and too dark”.
Disappointed but not deterred Josephine watched, and developed her skills, from the vantage-point of being a wardrobe-assistant and understudy. Soon she was promoted to the chorus-line itself, but the comic touches she brought to the act – such as rolling her eyes, criss-crossing her legs and her clumsy stage-movements – were not in the script. Even so by 1924 young Ms Baker had become the star of the show and of the ill-fated Chocolate Dandies, and was soon up-staging established favourites including Florence Mills, the darling of both Harlem and white society.. It was the reluctance of another “name” entertainer, Ethel Waters, to accept an engagement with La Revue Negre at the Theatre des Champs-Elysees in Paris the following year that gave the young artiste her chance.
Josephine took Paris by storm. Dressed in nothing more than a skirt of feathers in the Danse Sauvage and of bananas for La Folie du Jour she was an overnight success -though the show generally received poor reviews. Her act, which was described as being outrageously funny as well as sexy, and her zany personality inspired both painters and writers. She toured the continent extensively and within two years was already one of the most photographed women in the world and the highest-paid entertainer in Europe. This was at the end of the Roaring Twenties, just before the onset of the Great Depression and the rise of Nazism. Hitherto the young American in Paris had appeared to be little more than a transient symbol of a transient decade: her true mettle was yet to be tested.
Baker had witnessed at first-hand the infamous St Louis race riot in 1919, and the injustice of that society still rankled with her. She, herself, was still not accepted in her homeland. Although Josephine had developed into a sophisticated, mature and – indeed – powerful woman, now famous for an extensive range of costumes and fashionable clothes (which belied the sparseness of attire by which she had made her initial impact), American audiences and critics refused to welcome her when she returned as an international star in 1936 – the New York Times referred to her as a “Negro wench”. She took the rejection badly: shortly afterwards she became a French citizen..
While some of well-known contemporaries were suspected of making an accommodation with the German invaders in the Second World War, nobody could doubt where Josephine stood. As a Red Cross nurse and also a sub-lieutenant in the Women’s Auxiliary Air Force she used her celebrity to travel extensively, “sweet-talking” diplomats into processing visas for associates, carrying secret messages and reporting back on what she had seen. For her hard work and dedication she was awarded the Medal of the Resistance with rosette and named a Chevalier of the Legion of Honour by the French government. Josephine’s activities were curtailed only by a serious illness which almost took her life for which she was taken into hospital in Casablanca.
Baker, who could be capricious, was also generous in supporting colleagues, appearing at charity occasions, and, in war-time, entertaining the troops. She had a keen personal rivalry with French entertainment idol Maurice Chevalier. When they appeared on the same concert for soldiers on the famous Maginot Line of defensive forts Chevalier claimed the right (as being the bigger star) to close the show. He did not get the chance to do so. Josephine’s performance was so popular that she received “encore” after “encore” which extended her act appreciably and, at that time of curfew, prevented Maurice from taking the stage.
Josephine Baker had not backed down to the Nazis, and was not afraid to take the fight against racism to the U.S.A. She refused to perform before segregated audiences. After the popular Stork Club in New York denied her service, Josephine contested an acrimonious feud with the powerful newspaper columnist Walter Winchell. At first the then leaders of the Civil Rights movement did not relish having such a controversial recruit to their cause, but eventually the National Association for the Advancement of Coloured People (NAACP) named 20th May as being Josephine Baker Day.
By now the entertainer was in severely distressed financial circumstances due to her extravagance, her purchase of a medieval chateau, her clothes, her extensive menagerie of exotic animals, and to her pursuit of a dream. Josephine adopted a dozen boys and girls of differing racial origin – the “Rainbow Tribe” – to prove that “children of different ethnicities and religions could still be brothers”. The “Rainbow Tribe” comprised Akio, Janot, Luis, Jari, Jean-Claude, Moise, Brahim, Marianne, Koffi, Mara, Noel and Stellina. Furthermore she was now increasingly out of step with the new age of more militant civil rights agitation, whose younger representatives did not always appreciate the full extent of her commitment.
By the 1960s – although she spoke and stood with Dr Martin Luther King at the “I have a dream” Lincoln Memorial demonstration in 1963 – Baker’s career and fortunes were in free fall. She had to sell the castle, making “The Rainbow Tribe” homeless. Her marriage to fourth husband, orchestra-leader Jo Bouillon, ended in separation as had that to Jean Lion, by which she had acquired her new nationality, and the two of her youth. Yet her life had shown several times already that Josephine Baker was never out until she was out – and she wasn’t out yet. No scriptwriter could have given her a better “departure” from the stage.
In 1973 she performed at the Carnegie Hall in New York, the city in which she had been so reviled previously. This time Josephine received a standing ovation – American attitudes had come a long way in the intervening years – they had begun to catch up with Josephine. Then on 8th April 1975 Baker starred in Josephine, a show of her life, at the Bobino Theatre in Paris with celebrities such as Prince Rainier and Princess Grace of Monaco – who had rescued her from poverty by giving her a villa in which to live, actresses Sophia Loren and Jeanne Moreau, and rock-star Mick Jagger in the audience. President Giscard D’Estaing sent her a telegram: “In tribute to your limitless talent, and in the name of a grateful France, I send you fond wishes, dear Josephine, on the golden anniversary. Paris is celebrating with you”. The 68 year-old entertainer, who reprised her hits of half-a-century, was a sensation once more, as she had been 50 years earlier. The reviews were the best that she had ever received.
Four days later Josephine was dead (from a cerebral haemorrhage).
The French government honoured her funeral with full military honours including a 21-gun salute as befitted a national heroine. Some 20,000 people crowded the streets of Paris to watch the procession on its way to the Church of the Madeline. She was buried at the Cimetiere de Monaco in Monaco. It wasn’t a bad “exit” for “kid” from the slums of St Louis, but then ……..
Whatever the initial impression may have been – the wide rolling eyes, the clumsy stage-movements, the banana dance – Josephine Baker was never just a “kid” from anywhere. The French government had got it right – she was a heroine. As biographer Ean Wood describes, her life had been a battle. “She fought bravely for so many things over so many years: for her success as an entertainer, for blacks (by which she meant anyone who was oppressed or slighted), for the Allied cause in the war, for her animals, and for her children, who – in spite of the oddness of their upbringing – turned out well and remember her with affection”.
Josephine Baker – whichever way you look at it, there has never been anybody quite like her
