Ellsworth McGranahan “Shake” Keane (30 May 1927 – 11 November 1997) was a jazz musician and poet. He is best known today for his role as a jazz trumpeter, principally his work as a member of the ground-breaking Joe Harriott Quintet (1959–65).

Born on the Caribbean island of St Vincent into “a humble family that loved books and music”, Keane attended Kingstown Methodist School and St Vincent Grammar School. He was taught to play the trumpet by his father, Charles (who died when Keane was 13), and gave his first public recital at the age of six. When he was 14 years old, Keane led a musical band made up of his brothers. In the 1940s, with his mother Dorcas working to raise six children, the teenager joined one of the island’s leading bands, Ted Lawrence and His Silvertone Orchestra. During his early adulthood in St Vincent, his principal interest was literature, rather than the music for which he would become better known. He had been dubbed “Shakespeare” by his school friends, on account of this love of prose and poetry. This nickname was subsequently shortened to “Shake”, which name he came to use throughout his adult life. He published two books of poetry, L’Oubili (1950) and Ixion (1952), while still in St Vincent.

Keane emigrated to Great Britain in 1952. He worked on BBC Radio’s Caribbean Voices, reading poetry and interviewing fellow writers and musicians. He began reading literature at London University by day, while also playing the trumpet in London nightclubs, working in a number of styles including cabaret, highlife, soca, mento, calypso and jazz. From 1959 he committed more fully to jazz, spending six years as a member of pioneering alto saxophonist Joe Harriott‘s band. Harriott’s group was the first in Europe, and one of the first worldwide, to play free jazz, and Keane contributed mightily to the band’s artistic success, thanks to his fleet and powerful improvisatory skills on trumpet and flugelhorn. Both Harriott and Keane played with the Mike McKenzie Harlem All Stars.

During this period he and Harriott also played extensively with English jazz pianist Michael Garrick, often in a “poetry and jazz” setting. He also made a small handful of records under his own name, but these were usually light jazz, a world away from his work with Harriott and Garrick. In 1966 Keane left Britain to settle in Germany. He became featured soloist with the Kurt EdelhagenRadio Orchestra, and also joined the pre-eminent European jazz ensemble of the 1960s, The Kenny Clarke-Francy Boland Big Band.