Stomping at the Palace

The 27-strong Southern Syncopated Orchestra pictured in its 1919 heyday

Buckingham Palace's inclusion on a shortlist of the UK's most important jazz venues has focused attention on the musicians who played there.

Jazz legends Louis Armstrong and Sidney Bechet took to the stand over a five-year period from 1919, as did The Original Dixieland Jazz Band.

Their stories are known to aficionados.

But less familiar is the Southern Syncopated Orchestra, who also appeared before George V in 1919, and went on to take London by storm.

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The band was formed by US composer Will Marion Cook and featured British West Indian, West African and American musicians.

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The ensemble made a deep impression across Europe and the burgeoning club circuit before being invited to perform at Buckingham Palace.

According to a contemporary report in the Daily Telegraph in August 1919, the SSO entertained about 100 guests in a specially drained-out lake in the Palace gardens.

The orchestra would have played standards like Tin Pan Alley Blues and St Louis Blues in its set, using arrangements that were described as "equally admirable for their richness of invention, force of accent, and daring in novelty and the unexpected".

Sophisticated performers

The legendary clarinettist and saxophone virtuoso Sidney Bechet came to England with the SSO on a reputed weekly wage of $60, helping to put the band and their new style of syncopated music on the map.

Sidney Bechet came to England with the SSO on a reputed weekly wage of $60

The only surviving pictures of the 27-strong ensemble, taken in 1919 at the Brighton Dome, show a group of well groomed and sophisticated performers.

Many of them, including drummer Pete Robinson, pianist Mope Desmond and tenorist Frank Bates went on to settle in south London and marry white Englishwomen.

By 1921 there were at least 16 mixed race offspring, among them Florence Kenny, daughter of Frank Bates, and the families of Pete Robinson and Mope Desmond.

These survivors have been instrumental in helping to further unravel the SSO's contribution to London's black musical history, and make sense of the tragedy that soon befell the ensemble.

Uncertain future

A mere two years after that momentous appearance at Buckingham Palace, the orchestra was sailing on the SS Rowan from Glasgow to Derry to continue its tour of Britain.

The ship was struck by two others in an accident and eight members of the band were drowned.

Frank Bates was one of those who went down with the ship; Pete Robinson's body was recovered after the sinking but was buried in an unmarked grave in Tooting Cemetery.

The SSO disintegrated in the wake of the tragedy, leaving the widows of its British-based members to face an uncertain future marked by colour prejudice which would foreshadow the realities encountered by migrants coming to the UK over three decades later.

Musical forebears

In 2006, shortly after a commemoration ceremony in Scotland to mark the sinking of the SS Rowan, BBC London invited piano virtuoso Julian Joseph to meet some of the orchestra's descendants.

Florence Kenny, daughter of the SSO's Frank Bates, grew up in 1920s London, raised by white grandparents

Florence Kenny took part in the film interview as did Suzy Kester, grand-daughter of Pete Robinson and now an author.

Kester was born during a Luftwaffe air raid in 1940. She is an example of the many black Britons who lived in the capital before the arrival of the SS Windrush from Jamaica in 1948, but tend to be overlooked when talking about a black presence in the capital.

The families are now keen to trace other descendants of SSO members, whose families stayed on in England after the band broke up.

They believe dozens of Londoners remain unaware of the illustrious accomplishments of their musical forebears.