Ruby Colyer, Ken’s mother, was staying with relatives in Great Yarmouth at the time of his birth:18 April 1928. Bill Colyer, Ken’s eldest brother, remembers these as hard times and that he was put into care whilst his mother was away. Home was a third floor flat in Fitzroy Square, London W1, which Ken recalls as ‘that bug infested flat’ where his sister Daphne died from diphtheria following a fall down the stairs.

Ruby, worked as a cook, whilst Ken’s father was a chauffeur, often leaving the children to fend for themselves during working hours.

Whilst living here, Ken went to Marylebone Road Infants’ School until the Colyers moved into the country for a short time in Dagenham. The next move was a return to central London and a flat in Marshall Street in Soho, above Finkle’s sweet shop and Reece’s the furriers, described by Ken as ‘a mouse infested flat’.

Ken and his brothers, Bob and Bill, went to St. Anne’s School on Dean Street, from which Ken managed to join the choir of St. Anne’s Church. To Ken’s amazement, he was paid a stipend of six shillings (30p) after three months. ‘I was getting paid for what I liked,’ says Ken.

Ken remembers his life in Soho as idyllic, but that ended when his parents were able to put down a deposit on a house in the suburbs in Cranford to the west of London. Ken found life away from Soho difficult, but gradually settled to suburban life and began to perform well at school, the William Day School on the Bath Road, until he was fourteen.

Bill became interested in jazz and began to amass a record collection, from which Ken’s introduction to the world of jazz resulted whilst hearing his brother’s records. At first Ken was not interested in Bill’s music. It was not until Bill was away from home, on active service with the Hampshire Regiment during the Second World War, that Ken ‘took care’ of Bill’s records and became intrigued and entranced with the music of Nat Gonella, Natty Dominique, Sidney Bechet, the Bob Crosby Bobcats and Duke Ellington and many others, and blues and folk singers such as Leadbelly and Sleepy John Estes. Bunk Johnson and George Lewis were to come later.

For some time Ken had been playing harmonica; he would hear the tunes, try to play them and then want to hear them again and again.