We are all here today because, in one way or another, our lives have been changed by Ken Colyer and his music. But the pictures we have, the memories we treasure, are all personal, all different. And what I have been asked to do is to try to convey something of the total, to build a picture from the jigsaw pieces of those who, like me, knew him.

Of course, it is an impossible task. To begin with, Ken existed for and through his music. For him, communication meant music. Music was communication, as we have just heard from one of the early Crane River Band recordings.

So what do people remember?

For many of you, I know, the Ken Colyer sound was your first experience of New Orleans jazz. That in itself may seem odd; that a man born and brought up in these shores should have become so identified with a tradition that had its origins across the other side of the Atlantic among people of a different colour. But that was how it was. Indeed, Ken once received a tape from a new band which had just formed in New Orleans asking him whether they had got the sound right.

Getting the sound right was what he was good at. But how he did it was, and is, a mystery. For he could play as a guest with a bunch of quite ordinary musicians and with a couple of numbers transform them into a passable Colyer sound. One band leader who handed over his band to Ken for the evening was heard to remark, somewhat bitterly, "Why can’t they play like that for me?"

Even those who were the subjects of this transformation find it difficult to say how it happened. For some it was a quiet authority that he laid on the band. For others it was the advice, such as "Take it easy. Keep it down. Give plenty of light and shade."

This totally intuitive feeling for light and shade extended to his programming as well. He would pace a set and performance by his choice of numbers, changing or building the mood he wanted. Quiet spells would precede climaxes, creating a ‘listening period’ before the rave.

Never predictable, Ken approached every number with a fresh eye and ear. No matter how familiar the piece, he would seek for that new interpretation and inspire his band to be equally creative, not just playing it as before.

This inspiration in ensemble playing was extraordinary. Even seasoned players found themselves surprised by the extra level of excitement he could generate. Sometimes the would think they were on the final chorus, riding out the home straight, when Ken would play a flourish and everyone would slip into an even higher gear. He could always squeeze out that extra, hotter reprise.

As a musician, he had two marvellous qualities. First was his ability to abstract the essence from any piece of music and then give it rebirth in his own New Orleans style. And second was his vibrant sense of rhythm; he could sing unaccompanied and build up a swinging, driving performance which few others could achieve with a whole band behind them. This rhythmic feel is one of the distinguishing marks of the Colyer sound, far removed from the pedestrian beat of some of his more popularised contemporaries.

Outside of his music, his friends remember Ken as a quiet, private man – a loner, some would say – who liked talking about his years at sea and his love of aircraft. Not one to suffer fools gladly, he acquired a reputation for being somewhat morose and taciturn, but in reality he had a lovely sense of humour. Some of his anger undoubtedly came from his reactions to the things he hated in the musical scene; the sycophancy, the ‘leeching’, and the abuse of talent by the unscrupulous. This may explain why it took so long for him to accept that there were people who wanted nothing from him except his friendship and contact.

His single-minded approach was one reason why he refused to ‘go popular’, for that would have inevitably meant compromising his ideals. Unfortunately, this refusal made it harder for him to survive in a harsh competitive world and certainly led to a lot of the unhappiness that characterised his later life.

Happily, he will be remembered, not for the rare outbursts, but for the numerous kindnesses, especially in encouraging young musicians and letting his fellow bandsmen ‘have their head’. Ken’s music was not an imitation of New Orleans music, it was the music. As more than one New Orleans player said, "he played the truth".

A hard-drinking roustabout, in the best traditions of his New Orleans heroes, who never tailored his blunt – on occasions violent – manners to flatter audiences or club managements, his innate musicianship still continued to command an unwavering following.

A man of few words and few notes, Colyer played with an economy suggesting each note had been chosen with great care, and displayed the same qualities in his singing and guitar playing.

Kenneth Colyer was born in Great Yarmouth in 1928 and grew up in Soho before his family moved to Cranford, Middlesex, during the 1939-45 War. He became interested in jazz through listening to the record collection of an elder brother who was away in the Army, and took up first harmonica, then trumpet.

He did various jobs, including delivering milk and cleaning railway carriages, and served in the galley of a merchant ship which took him to America where he met his hero, the cornettist Wild Bill Davison.

Colyer’s first group, formed in 1949, was the Crane River Jazz Band, who rehearsed wherever they could, sometimes in open fields (to be chased off by irate owners) and in a road mender’s hut.

Its members were part of a generation which rejected the slick sophistication of the earlier Swing Era, believing that "real jazz" was played only by those New Orleans musicians who did not join Louis Armstrong and Sidney Bechet in the exodus from New Orleans in the 1920s but stayed at home and did not record until the 1940s.

Among the Cranes was the clarinettist Monty Sunshine, later to achieve international fame for his million-selling version of Petit Fleur, and John R T Davies, who was to become arranger for the later Temperance Seven.

After two years with the band Colyer briefly worked with a former member of Humphrey Lyttleton’s Band, clarinettist Ian Christie. But it was an unhappy association: Christie was too "modern".

In 1952, Colyer signed on with a ship again, with the sole intention of making the pilgrimage to Mecca – New Orleans, Louisiana. He jumped ship at Mobile, Alabama, and completed the remaining 150 miles by Greyhound Bus. Arriving at his goal he got the chance to play and record (on primitive equipment in a front room) with his heroes. The clarinettist George Lewis even offered him a job, but the American Federation of Musicians and the prevailing racial code scotched the proposal.

Colyer overstayed his visitor’s permit and was jailed in the notorious New Orleans Parish jail, which afterwards led him to be deified by like-minded members of the British jazz fraternity. He was invited to become titular leader of a co-operative band formed in his absence that included Chris Barber.

One of their records, a version of a 1930s pop tune Isle of Capri, was the first British jazz record to enter the top 50 in the musical press hit lists. But the co-operative ethos was not to his liking, and in 1954 he left to form a band under his undisputed leadership, using the clarinettist Acker Bilk.

When the 20-year dispute between the American and British musicians’ unions ended, Colyer later accompanied the George Lewis Band in New England colleges and in 1958 his band shared the bill with a full Lewis Band on a British tour.

Colyer was a master of melodic improvisation, although he was musically illiterate and knew nothing about the rules of harmony. His whole approach was directed towards rhythmic and melodic variation, yet he had an instinctive harmonic sense which made the "shape of the tune" crystal clear. At the same time he was rhythmically surefooted and could swing a band with very few notes.

Unfortunately not many of his colleagues could live up to these standards, and he was not adept at explaining the way. Taciturn and intolerant, Colyer expected his musicians to know. He never rehearsed and assumed that any shortcomings would work themselves out in performance. Inferior sessions were accepted as part of the natural order.