E.T. MENSAH

Book cover of a biography of ET Mensah.

Listen: Music Clip 1

E. T. Mensah who in the sixties became known as ‘the King of Highlife’  is famous as the pioneer in the development of the swing-jazz influenced highlife dance-bands that were so popular throughout  West Africa in the 1950's and 60's. Furthermore, it was his Tempos band that largely spread highlife into Nigeria in the early 1950’s .

The Tempos, and other  urban dance bands modeled on it, became the musical zeitgeist of the optimistic period of early independence, due to their successful use of  sophisticated western instruments to play African tunes mirroring the fact that a western socio-political structure was also becoming rapidly Africanised

E. T. as he is known, was born in Accra in 1919 and he  started out  his musical career when, as a small boy, he Joined the Accra Orchestra as a flute player. The Accra Orchestra, formed by Teacher Lamptey, became the best-known prewar orchestra, and many of Ghana's top musicians played in it, including E.T., Joe Kelly, and Tommy Gripman.  "During the early twenties, during my childhood, the term "highlife" was created by people who gathered around the dancing clubs such as the Rodger Club (built in 1904) to watch and listen to the couples enjoying themselves. Highlife started as a catch-name for the indigenous songs played at these clubs by such early bands as the Jazz Kings, the Cape Coast Sugar Babies, the Sekondi Nanshamang, and later the Accra Orchestra. The people outside called it "highlife" as they did not reach the class of the couples going inside, who not only had to pay a, then, relatively high entrance fee of 7s 6d., but also had to wear full evening dress including top-hats."

The high-class dance orchestras were eclipsed during the Second World War, when American and British troops were stationed in Ghana. They brought in jazz and swing. Night-clubs and drinking dives were opened to cater for them with names like the Kalamazoo, Weekend-in-Havana and the New York Bar. They also set up dance combos and played with local musicians.

The first combo was the Black and White Spots, set up by Sergeant Leopard. E. T. left his brother's orchestra and joined up with Leopard's jazz combo as sax player in 1940. Sergeant Leopard, a Scot, had been a professional saxophonist in England. According to E. T. it was Leopard himself who introduced them to  jazz techniques as he "taught us the correct methods of intonation, vibrato, tongueing, and breath control, which contributed to place us above the average standard in the town."

Just after the war, E. T. joined the Tempos, set up by Ghanaian pianist Adolf Doku and an English engineer and sax player called Arthur Harriman. At first the band included some white soldiers, but after the war, when the Europeans, left the band became completely African.  In 1948 E. T. became the leader of the Tempos.  AT that time it was a seven-piece band with E. T. doubling on trumpet and sax, Joe Kelly on tenor sax, and Guy Warren (known as Kofi Ghanaba) on drums.  Guy Warren made an important contribution as he had been playing Afro-Cuban music and calypsos in England. So the Tempos not only played with a jazz touch, but incorporated calypsos into their repertoire and added the bongos, congas and maraccas to their line-up.