DANDO SHAFT - Ted Kay tribute 2

This is a little thrown together as I didn't personally know Ted Kay - the bongo player / percussionist (tablas) with Coventry's most legendary band Dando Shaft. I only knew him as someone who saw Dando Shaft quite a lot of times in Coventry in the early 70's and listened to their albums and read reviews.

Ted always seemed to be a really nice and good humoured man and was the first percussionist I saw live playing tablas. I loved Indian classical music but had never seen anyone actully playing them at that stage and so I was particuarly fascinated by how he intergrated their sound with Dando's intermix of celtic and bulgarian fiddle playing and the jazz / folk elements of the guitars and bass. Ted's percussion playing was part of the intermix that gave Dando it's original sound and approach to folk based music.

Ted's daughter has told me that he was a wonderful father.

As I can't really elaborate on his life as a whole and his later musical and creative adventures, the best way to

celebrate his life is through the music he made with Dando Shaft - and although that was in the late 60's and 70's - listened to their compilation album - the music still resonates today.

here is a piece written by Pete Willow for the Coventry Telegraph -

"COVENTRY lost one of its great folk icons when "Bongo" Ted Kay died last weekend after a long illness.

Ted played tabla and percussion for cult folk band Dando Shaft in the 1970s.

He appeared with various local line-ups and teamed up in the mid-90s with Dando's multi-instrumentalist Martin Jenkins and singer Kalinka Vulcheva to form the celebrated Anglo-Bulgarian crossover band The Vulcheva-Jenkins Incident."

Ted played in bands before and after Dando Shaft which I will add here as I find out which ones - Meanwhile I've added

some Music press ads for Dando Shaft and also to

mention that they played Whitley Abbey school in Cov c 1971 with Gentle Giant among the many gis they did nationwide / internationally.

Here is another Youtube of Dando Shaft - a short but sweet live snippet - (there's another  vid on one of the other Dando  posts on this site - Here