[2][3] After the end of the war, he played in many of the leading British dance bands of the era, including those led by Nat Temple, Nat Gonella, Ambrose, Leslie "Jiver" Hutchinson and Eric Winstone, as well as in Victor Feldman's Sextet, before forming Kenny Graham's Afro-Cubists in April 1950.
[1][2] The Afro-Cubists recorded two EPs in 1954, Afro-Cadabra and Excerpts from Caribbean Suite, with a band including saxophonist Eddie Mordue and drummer Phil Seamen.
[7] The following year he recorded an album, Presenting Kenny Graham, for the Pye Nixa label, featuring Seamen and pianist Stan Tracey, and engineered by Joe Meek.
He also wrote for films such as The Small World of Sammy Lee (1963), Night Train to Paris (1964) and Where the Bullets Fly (1966), and an orchestral suite, "The Labours of Heracles", for BBC Radio.
It was said of him that "he was completely dedicated to his strong belief in how jazz should sound",[2] and was described as "a man of uncompromised integrity in both his musical and personal life [who] hated insincerity and crassness",[3] and who had a "mercurial temperament".