In the late 1970’s, Kaye moved to Amsterdam and became a member of Buma/Stemra (the Dutch copyright organisation that oversees distribution of royalties) and the Dutch Association of Professional Improvising Musicians (BIM). In Amsterdam he performed with jazz musicians such as singer Babs Gonzales, funk-jazz flautist Wally Shorts, trombonist Bert Koppelaar, bassist Wilbur Little and conductor Boy Edgar (in the Amsterdam Concertgebouw). In the early years in Amsterdam, he rented an apartment from jazz saxophonist Rosa King and became known on the local jazz scene.
On October 1979, he opened his own jazz club in the centre of Amsterdam, Cab Kaye’s Jazz Piano Bar. When not touring Poland, Portugal and Iceland, he performed five nights a week in his own Piano Bar, a meeting place for jazz musicians. Frequent visitors included Rosa King, trombonist Slide Hampton, television doctor and saxophonist Aart Gisolf, guitarist Dirk-Jan “Bubblin” Toorop, pianist David Mayer, singer Gerrie van der Klei, jazz pianist Cameron Japp, Max Roach, Oscar Peterson, Pia Beck and others.
His final significant performance was on 8 September 1996, at the Bimhuis in Amsterdam. Many musicians and jazz lovers, including Herman Openneer, Pim Gras, the Dutch jazz drummer John Engels and Rosa King, organised a birthday party for the then 75-year-old pianist. He was unable to sing due to his mouth floor cancer, but enthusiastically played piano and jammed with many musicians. Subsequently, he performed only sporadically in smaller venues and privately in Amsterdam’s Dapperbuurt. The last time Cab Kaye played piano (including “Jeannette You Are My Love”) was in March 2000, at home, along with Rosa King.
Although born in London, Kaye considered himself African. He had three marriages; first in 1939 to Theresa Austin, a jazz singer and daughter of a sailor from Barbados. Cab and Theresa often performed together. The couple had two daughters, Terri Quaye (born 8 November 1940, Bodmin), Tanya Quaye and a son, Caleb Quaye (born 1948, London). Cab met his second wife, a Nigerian named Evelyn, in the 1960s in Ghana. Together, they moved back to England. After a brief affair in 1973 with Sharon McGowan, he had a son, Finley Quaye (born 25 March 1974, Edinburgh). Cab Kaye met his son Finley as an adult[23] in 1997 following a concert of Finley’s in the rock music venue and cultural centre Paradiso Amsterdam. After the concert Cab sent a messenger with a message for Finley written carefully and painstakingly on a parchment scroll. The messenger read the message to Finley and he and Cab Kaye met the following morning with Finley’s band members band at the house Cab shared with his wife Jeannette in Amsterdam.
Three generations – grandfather Caleb Jonas Quaye (Ernest Mope Desmond), Kwamlah Quaye (Cab Kaye) and youngest son Finley Quaye – have all played, at different times, at Glasgow’s Barrowlands, Wolverhampton’s Wulfrun Hall and London’s Cafe de Paris. His third wife, Jeannette, was Dutch. After marrying, he decided to settle in the Netherlands and became a Dutch citizen.
In the 1990s, Kaye was diagnosed with mouth floor cancer with the result that he lost the ability to speak. Until his death at the age of 78 (13 March 2000) in the Dapperbuurt, Kaye lived in Amsterdam, where he was cremated. His ashes were scattered in the North Sea and in Accra.
Cab Kaye’s motto was: “Truth is stranger than f(r)iction (excuse my diction, I walk with a lisp).”