[1][2] He worked as a chauffeur and jockey in Trinidad and British Guiana before travelling to London and enlisting in the Middlesex Regiment during World War I.
After demobilisation he began organising concerts and toured the Caribbean as a vaudeville entertainer, singing calypso songs and performing comedy sketches.
[3] She produced Brown Sugar, a jazz musical production at the Lafayette Theatre that featured Manning and Fats Waller and his band.
He and Garvey opened the Florence Mills Social Club in London's Carnaby Street, which quickly became a gathering spot for the city's black intellectuals.
In 1947, Manning wrote and directed Caribbean Carnival, a Broadway show produced by Adolph Thenstead,[5] which was billed as the "First Calypso Musical Ever Presented".