Oscar Grenville Hastings McKenzie (17 September 1922, British Guiana – December 1999, Spain), known as Mike McKenzie, was a Guyanese jazz pianist, bandleader, vocalist, composer and arranger, who performed in London from the 1950s to the 1980s. He covered a wide repertoire, from Habanera and Calypso, to trad jazz, swing and jazz standards. He led The Mike McKenzie Trio, Quartet and Quintet; Mike McKenzie's Habaneros; Mike McKenzie and his Rhythm; and The Mike McKenzie All Stars.
Early years
McKenzie was taught piano by his mother from the age of seven, and violin by his father from the age of 16. He played regularly in Georgetown, then moved to London in 1949.
1950s and 1960s
At the beginning of the 1950s, McKenzie was working with producer Denis Preston at both the BBC and for the Melodisc and Parlophone record labels. Preston rapidly established McKenzie as a regular recording artist and contributor to radio and television broadcasts for at least a decade. Preston had an ear for putting together musicians from different genres and had a production company that licensed his recordings to commercial record labels:
McKenzie's line ups similarly featured a fusion of instrumentalists: Joe Harriott, Shake Keane, Bertie King, Humphrey Lyttleton, Denny Wright and Jack Fallon, and vocalists George Browne, Marie Bryant and Lili Verona.
McKenzie also featured in the founding of the Black British carnival tradition. On 30 January 1959, The Mike McKenzie Trio performed with Cleo Laine at the first Caribbean Carnival (West Indian Gazette Carnival) at St Pancras Town Hall, a precursor to the Notting Hill Carnival. Prior to that, in 1957, he had appeared in a BBC radio programme, Caribbean Carnival: The British West Indies Show. Every year, from 1954 to 1961, he represented the West Indies on a series of BBC Radio programmes celebrating music from the Commonwealth.
He performed, either solo or with a combo, at London venues as well as the Moss Empires circuit. They included the Colony Room Club in Soho (1950–c.1970), Hungaria Restaurant in Regent Street (1955), The Milroy and The Empress clubs in Mayfair and Le Caprice restaurant in St James's. In 1964, he appeared in a documentary filmed in a pub in the Isle of Dogs, accompanying its proprietor, Queenie Watts, performing the Sinatra classic "The Best Is Yet to Come".
McKenzie freelanced or featured as a sideman with groups such as those of Lord Kitchener, Joe Appleton (1950), Humphrey Lyttleton (with whom he toured and recorded in 1952), Fela Sowande's BBC Ebony Club Band (1953) and Lonnie Donnegan, with whom he guested. He toured with Jack Parnell in the jazz revue Jazz Wagon (c.1954), accompanied Ella Fitzgerald at the Mars Bar in Paris and played at the London Palladium with the Ted Heath Orchestra.
His broadcast career with the BBC lasted for 20 years; he was a familiar name in broadcasting, with frequent appearances on the BBC Light Programme, playing a huge range of styles.
He composed songs with his wife, the lyricist and actress Elizabeth McKenzie, and Denis Preston; he was an arranger for Humphrey Lyttleton and Wally Fawkes.
1970s and 1980s
On 28 November 1972, McKenzie started a four-year residency at The White Elephant on the River in Chelsea, accompanied by Johnny Hawksworth and Stuart Livingston, followed by seven years at The Dorchester, and finally in the 1980s, nine years at The Savoy, eventually playing from his wheelchair. In 1978, he returned to working with the producer Denis Preston on a recording which was never released since Preston died in 1979 before it could be issued. According to its composer Daryl Runswick, McKenzie was by then firmly established as a nightclub pianist, and "had a residency at a nightclub in Mayfair – Berkeley Square, if I remember correctly. This was to be Mike's record, to be sold on the door at the nightclub as the punters left [...] In a further twist, Denis prescribed that the musical style was to be Latin Fusion in the manner of Carlos Santana. What this had to do with Mike McKenzie and his cocktail jazz I never worked out."
In 1984, McKenzie recorded an LP of his songs with Elizabeth McKenzie, Spell It Out, which he co-produced with his son, the bass player John McKenzie.
Legacy
Vibert C. Cambridge, in his book Musical Life in Guyana, describes the contributions West Indian musicians made to the evolution of British popular music during the 20th century, singling out calypso recordings in particular:
In popular culture
The lyrics of "Tomato" (1952) and "Little Boy" (1953) are quoted in Frank Norman's 1959 novel, Stand on Me.