The Guardian from London, Greater London, England • 18

18 I OBITUARIES The Guardian Thursday November 13 1997 Shake Keane The anger behind a free form of jazz time, begun in 1958, were just being unveiled and Keane was the partner for whom he had been waiting. The deliberate bohemian, he complemented pal of Bishop's College in Georgetown, he fared little better, and with a second marriage breaking up, lost his job. In 1979 he wrote The Volcano Suite, five poems inspired by the eruption of the island's Soufriere that Good Friday; SHAKE KEANE, who has died of stomach cancer aged 70, was the most accomplished and inventive trumpeter of his generation in Europe and, with saxophonist Joe Harriott, a pioneer in throwing off the restrictions of chord-based improvisation in jazz. He was also a man of letters, a student of African history, and poet of some renown. Born in St Vincent, he grew up immersed equally in the trumpet, English literature and the poetry of the Caribbean.

His father died when he was 13; his mother worked to raise six children. Though the island was tiny, its proud boat-building tradition and small whaling fleet helped produce some maverick heroes, Marcus Garvey's ships' commander among them. Keane fitted the bill. He inherited the old-fashioned Caribbean morality of the period, while being blooded early in the musi sued, the start of a continuing friendship. And yet this was the man who described his personality as "partly gentle and partly well, vulgar and violent." Recognition of these extremes was important: they provide the contrasting elements great jazz requires, but behind the lyrical improviser and the capacity for well-argued conversation, lay anger.

Living with him was impossible, as several women discovered. He remained proud of his sons: Chris's boys, Alan and Julian, and Roland Ra-manan, the author of occasional jazz criticism, who played trumpet with his father on his 1989 visit. That his creativity declined saddened those who loved him. It would be easy to, say that he squandered his talents, but this fails to take into account the way jazz musicians are viewed, especially in post-colonial society. In Brooklyn we would meet at a Nostrand Avenue bar to drink Guinness with ice and put the world to rights, but more often than not he drank alone.

A still formidable figure in his full white beard, he felt, he said, alienated from the local society, yet showed little interest in leaving. But he was writing more: poems with "words you can and an autobiography. Only in Norway were his talents adequately recognised. Television personality Eric Bye organised concerts and an extended role in a film; these trips became much-needed vacations with pay, with medical check-ups and extensive dental work provided. But his cancer was undiagnosed and he was already ill when he headed for Norway the final time.

cians' arena: first playing in public aged six, and a bandleader at 14. He started writing poetry in childhood, too, and was published "Shake" stood for Shakespeare and taught in grammar school before moving to England in 1952. Reading literature at London University, he played mambos in night clubs and jazz with pianist Ozzie da Costa at Carnaby Street's famous black hostelry, the Sunset. He recorded calypsos with Lord Kitchener and West African highlife with Guyanese pianist Mike McKenzie and, copying the Coasters, provided the bass voice in a vocal group for the popular weekly TV show Oh Boy! In 1960 he joined Jamaican saxophonist Joe Harriott, whom he had interviewed for Henry Swanzy's Caribbean Voices on the BBC World Service. Harriott's "free form" experiments with harmony and Michael Ward Val Wilmer Ellsworth McGranahan Keane, trumpeter, poet, born May 30, 1927; died November 10, 1997 Keane in Brooklyn, where he felt alienated, but in no hurry to leave photograph: val wilmer Catharine Carver Elegant editor of English Camping it up in Carry Ons the saxophonist acerbic and rigorous personal manner just as he overshadowed him (Harriott's term) in bandstand conversations.

The music demanded alertness from each participant and the ability to follow the logic of what another might do, and Keane found the experience so rewarding that he gave up his studies a year away from graduation. Their association continued until 1965. Now playing the more mellow-toned flugelhorn, he was in demand for session work, including a series of dates with arranger Johnny Keating. When Harriott disbanded, however, he moved to Europe where, with Jamaican saxophonist Wilton "Bogey" Gayn-air, he became featured soloist with Kurt Edelhagen's radio band. He also played with the big band of Europeans and Americans-in-exile co-led by pioneer bebop drummer Kenny Clarke and Belgian pianist Francy Boland.

Keane was no snob, either musical or literary. He saw the best in every situation, and whatever the company, would always find mutuality. At pianist Russ Henderson's legendary Sunday jams at the Coleherne, he would play Caribbean and I still remember a Sunday afternoon at a Wandsworth banjoist's flat where a post-prandial session united elements of the Temperance Seven, the folk revival, and chart-topping group the Four Pennies. Granted, alcohol was the cement in that unlikely alliance, but to Keane, the grand egalitarian, the company was all one. In 1972 he returned to St Vincent to become director of culture, but his bohemian temperament was unsuited to diplomatic rigour.

As princi leading role was in an early Hammer film, What the Butler Saw (1950), in which he is billed third. In 1953, Ward and Norman Wisdom shared a memorable crockery-smashing scene in Wisdom's first film. Trouble in Store. In four subsequent Wisdom films, roles were created specifically for Ward. The most substantial was in Up in the World (1956), in which he was a tutor with a penchant for embroidery.

Although almost always a figure of fun, Ward invested his stereotyped roles with a quiet dignity far removed from the limp-wristed caricatures attempted by most heterosexual actors of the day. His skills were highly regarded by his peers. "Ward, being a most individual personality, was not easily cast," wrote Roy Boulting in 1993, but he and his brother John "went through our screenplays in the hope of finding some character to which he might bring his own special talents." On television, Ward was the gay man disinherited by his father in the play The Richest Man in the World in 1960. He was also in many comedy series, including Hancock's Ha If -Hour, Steptoe and Son, The Two Ronnies, Rising Damp and, as the gay neighbour Adrian in The Morecambe and Wise Show. After the film, Revenge of the Pink Panther, in 1978, Ward suffered a mild stroke, the first of a succession of pressing panic buttons of what is not.

Like a true drama queen, fashion huffs and flounces at the merest murmur of morality. The morals of fashion. ID. With Chatwin "IF Bruce Chatwin had been portly, myopic and mouse-haired," writes Susannah Clapp, "his life and reputation would have been quite different." Chatwin's death might have been different too. When he died in January 1989, his fatal illness, not yet acknowledged to be Aids, was still a matter of speculation; his memorial service, at London's Greek Orthodox cathedral, compounded the mystery: the proceedings were conducted in a language none of his friends could understand, under the aegis of a faith few of them knew he had espoused.

There was no encomium at St Sophia, no valedictory address no account of Chatwin's childhood, of his early career in the art world, of his reinvention of himself as a writer, of his marriage, and a prize-winning book of poems One a Week with Water was published in Cuba. He married a third time, to Margaret, and at 53 moved to New York, but with no work permit and few connections, opportunities were limited. In Brooklyn's rugged Bed-ford-Stuyvesant he wrote reggae and soca arrangements for Caribbean musicians and played local dances, rarely leaving the area. ONLY when invited to Barbados for Carifesta in 1989 did he begin playing seriously again. The same year pianist Michael Garrick, with whom he had helped pioneer Poetry and Jazz, re-created the Harriott quintet for a British tour and Keane re-discovered his playing ability.

At the Africa Centre I organised a talk with him and fellow Caribbean trumpeter Pete Patterson, inviting other black veterans to share in their reminiscences. Two years later Linton Kwesi Johnson filmed him in London, the fulfilment of a long cherished ambition. Talking with Johnson and fellow poet John La Rose and strolling past the site of the Sunset, Keane the raconteur was in his element, but his trumpet-playing was a travesty of its former elegance. To know Keane was to experience a mountain of contradictions. He was one of the first local musicians to be friend me, when I was 18 and writing an article about riott's new music.

He took me under his wing, bought me lager-and-lime and helped me feel at ease. Dinners with him and first wife Christine en Skill in even the smallest of parts Michael Ward illnesses. He was unable to walk unaided after 1986. Although he was often distressed, particularly by nursing home treatment, he was amused and flattered by continuing fan mail. He was proud of his career and thought of himself as an actor in supporting roles rather than a character actor, a term he found demeaning.

Unlike most homosexual actors of his generation, he came out in a modest way, writing articles for Gay News. There were, however, no lasting relationships. For most of this year, Ward had been a patient at the Princess Louise hospital in Kensington. I last saw him in September, by which time he had grown a splendid beard. "You look very distinguished," I complimented him.

"Extinguished," he corrected me. There are no immediate survivors. David McGilfivray Michael Ward, actor, born April 9, 1909; died November 8, 1997 of his illness, or his death. There was no evocation of his flirtatious charm, or his literary originality, the gifts that had brought hundreds of mourners together under the bare brick dome of the cathedral, in an atmosphere thick with incense and liturgical Greek. Those gathered there could note only, with be-musement, that the combination of austerity and exoticism was in keeping with Chatwin's own taste in such things.

With Chatwin: Portrait of a Writer, by Susannah Clapp, reviewed in the New York Review of Books. Wall power FIRST it's on to the boulder wall. This is a huge slab of concrete and fibreglass carefully moulded to offer a genuine rock-face feel and quickly shifts from the easy-peasy climb to the fucking impossible as you move down its length. For the first timer a quick clamber up the novice section gets the blood flowing, increases confidence and gets Home from home Shake to the Fulham Road had been long, tortuous and intensely single-minded. She was in appearance rather like a devoted and con scientious town librarian in say, New England or the Midwest; her voice was exception ally soft and low; even after over 30 years in England, she never quite lost her native modulation.

It was when she started working over your typescript that you recognised the precision of her mind. She went over the text with a light-blue pencil which, she assured you, could be rubbed out and ignored if you did not agree with any suggestion. You usually did agree; she was almost always right. All that was merely a beginning. What pulled her out of the general run was a higher quality altogether.

She could be a sort of literary midwife, seeing what you were trying to say but had not managed quite to get out. She told Benjamin de Mott, not happy about the ending of his A Married Man, that all he need do was drop the final paragraph; he did. Preparing a book of essays, I was puzzled about how to make one essay out of two pieces on the same author. She sent them back with the blue pencil weaving in and out of paragraph after paragraph and page after page. When put together as she suggested they became a single coherent whole; literary surgery.

When she was at Chatto, a gossip claimed that Iris Murdoch objected to any editing at all on her novels. "Simply I'm not sure that you continue to care. Because you see the sun in the sky everyday, and then you see that same strong light radiating from the body of either a star, or someone who really likes to look like someone who could be, and who knows, might soon be a star. Really, there are more people than you might think who go around looking just like various physical embodiments your Frieze the coolest cult I I 1 Letter Stanley Forman writes: When Norman Greenfield (obituary November 6) was the "star" organiser in Barnsley of the British-Soviet Friendship Society in 1947 he had a mynah bird which he finally taught to say "Read the Daily Within days the name of the paper had changed to the Morning Star and he had to start again. Birthdays The Most Rev Dr George Carey, Archbishop of Canterbury, 62; Sir John Coles, Head of the Diplomatic Service, 60; Adrienne Corri, actress, 66; Jeff Ennis, Labour MP, 45; Baroness (Joan) Les-tor, former Labour minister, 66; Whoopi Goldberg, actress, 42; Alexandra Shul-man, editor.

Vogue, 40; Helen Southworth, Labour MP, 41; Howard Wilkinson, football manager, 54. Death Notices PEARSON. Dr. Androw, on November 7lh, peacefully at home. Service at Trimly Methodist Church.

Bury St. Edmunds. 12.45pm. Tuesday 18th November Family Mowers only Donations in lieu to Christian Aid may bo sent to 2 Spinatield Road. Bury St.

Edmunds, Sultolk IP33 3AN. RANDALL, whilst on holiday in Greece last yoar COLIN PETER aged 47 years. Dearly loved husband ot Janet, very dear talhor ol Tom. much loved son ol Doris and a good friend to so manv. Servico at HutclilFa Wood Crematorium.

Shotlield on Tuesday 18th November 1997 at 3.30pm. Family tlowers only please but donations payabla to Oxlam may bo sent to John Heath Sons. "The world is a poorer place without In Memoriam LLOYD-OWEN. Arthur, 13th Novemtwr 937 Sixty years but the last livo have been the longest. Elizabeth.

To Dlace vour announcement toloohone 0171 713 4567 or lax 0171 713 4129 between 9am and 3pm Mon-Fri. Jackdaw wants jewels. E-mail the bird at fax 01 71-713 4366; or write to Jackdaw at The Guardian, 119 Farringdon Road, London EC1R3ER. Hannah Pool CLARIFICATIONS Friday Review on November 7, the singer of the song Fever was wrongly stated. Fever was sung by Peggy not Brenda) Lee.

ON PAGE 7, Guardian Sport, November 10, Boris Becker was said to have "just turned Becker is 29. It's the policy of the Guardian to correct errors as soon as possible. Readers may contact the office of the Readers' Editor, Ian Mayes, by telephoning 0171 239 9589 from Ham to 5pm, Monday to Friday. Fax: 0171 239 9897. E-mail: Ian.Mayesguardian.co.uk isn't true," she replied.

"It was a pleasure to edit her and we got on fine So did we all. She had what one might call a character of mild-tern pered steel; she was not to be swayed from what she knew was the inalienable need to adhere to the best that had been thought and said. Her life was centred in literature and writers, music, the theatre, painting and painters. In her last years her friends finally persuaded her to have Surprisingly, she hugely enjoyed her food, preferably with a glass of wine a television set. She sent it back within a month.

The Guardian, the Times Literary Supplement, and Radio 3 were her staples. But, a typical paradox, she liked watching cricket on the television. After she became a freelance, she continued to edit a few of her authors as an act of friendship. She would accept no. payment and resisted any devices meant to provide money for her.

She refused an award from PEN. The list of those who came to admire and feel deep affection for her is bewilderingly long. She edited Saul Bellow through the first quarter-century of his novels; Flannery O'Connor, Elizabeth Bishop, Richard Ellmann, Leon Edel, John Berryman, Maynard idea of sunshine might take. In LA the sun, the one in the sky, shines everyday and the other one, the one that goes by the name of Hollywood, or the Industry or the Business, operates just like it: everything revolves around it, satellite-like. The porn industry revolves around it, the music industry revolves around it and the art world revolves around it sometimes like a planet, like a moon.

Everyone in the LA art world wants to be closer to the big sun of Hollywood; the closer you are, the more power, more cachet (sunshine) you have. I won't say much more about this now, but I will leave you with a thought about what's what. Anjelica Houston is married to an artist; can you remember his name and if you can, could you possibly describe one of his pieces? Gimme sunshine, all the while. Frieze. Demon drink THERE were Australian wines on sale in this country at time when even Austra Mack, Leonard Woolf, Christopher Fry and many others.

In one sense, she lived an intensely private life: in another sense she was sur rounded by friends. She resolved that paradox by keeping her friends in separate compartments. In a crisis someone of whom others of her friends knew nothing would arrive from the Netherlands or France and give help; telephone calls would come Irom the ui and Canada; as you left her flat you would come across, say, a Polish poet who had for years depended on her editing. When she again began to reduce her possessions on moving from Paris back to Chelsea, and when she left there for good, she simply got rid of almost everything. She belongs to a leaner and more committed era of those who honour the western world's long traditions in the arts and literature.

But, surprisingly in one so small and thin, she hugely enjoyed her food, preferably with a glass of wine or a half-pint of beer. The last time I saw her was in a simple Italian restaurant off the King's Road. She could only walk with difficulty and her speech was hardly intelligible. But she ate heartily, had a glass of red wine, and was obviously enjoying herself very much indeed. That is a good mem ory for one of her admirers.

Richard Hoggart Catharine DeFrance Carver, editor, born September 17, 1921; died November 11, 1997 lians were not altogether sure that the red grog they made from grapes might be called wine. It came in screw top flagons, and was relished by upright citizens who would have hotly denied that "wine" ever touched their lips. Oz guzzlers, The Oldie. CORRECTIONS AND IN OUR front page report on November 11 giving the decision of Judge Hiller Zobel in the Louise Woodward case we incorrectly quoted him as saying, "I do, however, recognise that mercy is not less than appropriate." What he actually said was, "mercy does not lessen THE photograph on Page 10 yesterday, in an article on university funding, showed the Sheldonian, Oxford, not the Ashmolean Museum. IN A panel accompanying an interview with Mick Huck-nall which appeared in the IT WAS, I think, Lionel Trilling who described Catharine Carver, who has died aged 76, as the best editor in English of her generation.

He would have been echoed by a long line of other American and English critics, academics and novelists, who passed through her hands. Catharine Carver was born in Cambridge, Ohio, and gained her BA from Muskin-gun College, New Concord, in May 1943. That is all the documents reveal of her early life. We know she worked at the University of Chicago before moving east to work for Har-court Brace, Houghton Mifflin, Putnam, the New Yorker; and was in the late 1950s assistant editor of Partisan Review. In the mid-1960s she assigned to her brother most of what funds she had, burned her correspondence and left America for ever.

In London she worked at Chatto and Windus, and OUP until it moved to Oxford. She had a short time at Gollancz and by the mid-1970s became a freelance. A few years later'she again sold or gave away most of her possessions. She moved to Italy and then Paris. When ill-health threatened, she moved back to England (she had become a British citizen a few years earlier) and stayed with friends until her health deteriorated further.

A sheltered flat in Chelsea was found. From there a severe stroke this September took her to hospital for the last time. The journey from small-time Ohio you plugged into the kind of physical and mental demands that the harsher walls are going to offer. Even here you get a small sense of the buzz that climbers crave and enjoy. Climbing is physically and mentally tough.

To be sure it doesn't offer the adrenaline rush of super-hip sliding sports but it is so all consuming as to be meditative. The mental effort of picking a route up, choosing the right combination of lumps, nooks and crannies with which to ascend, and then the physical effort of completing the moves, leaves no cranial space for other concerns. All kinds of sports claim Zen qualities these days, from surfing to boules, but if any sport requires calm, controlled and complete physical and mental absorption, then it's climbing. Going up a wall can stop you going up the wall, according to Arena. Sun city IN LA the sun shines every day.

And after a while it's not that you don't notice it but PROMINENT among the stock characters of postwar British cinema was the supercilious, effeminate, minor official. Usually referred to at the time as "precious" or he was homosexual only to those in the know. Whether a private secretary, clerk or salesman, the part was almost invariably played by Michael Ward, who has died aged 88. Always to be seen sighing and raising his eyes to heaven, while sneering lines such as: "How utterly Ward was the straight man (sic) for many comedians, notably Norman Wisdom and Morecambe and Wise. He also worked regularly in Boulting Brothers films and in the Carry On series.

He transferred successfully to television until ill-health forced him into retirement in the late 1970s. Born George Yeo, the only child of a clergyman in Carn-menellis, near Redruth, Cornwall, Ward changed his mind about becoming a concert pianist, and went to London's Central School of Speech and Drama. After repertory, his first West End engagement was as understudy to the comedian Vic Oliver in The Night and the Music at the London Coliseum in 1945. In films from 1947, his camp manner limited him to supporting roles, but he usually managed to steal his scenes, even if he had only one line, as in Carry On Cabby (1963). The nearest he came to a Drama queen FASHION considers itself to be at the forefront of freedom of expression.

It is constricted by no one and nothing, it proudly proclaims; fashion is at the cutting edge, the avant garde, the litmus test of good taste. It defines the line between what is bourgeois, has-been and what shall be, what we shall call The faster the current becomes passe, what is de la mode becomes more and more risque. In an ecstasy of speed, fashion tries to define the new in endless resurrections of bygone eras. Pushing down barriers of what is acceptable and.