Barber Still In The Chair
He founded and still leads possibly the most influential British band of all time, a band that was responsible for firing the musical spark that would eventually develop into Beatlemania and conquer the world. His name? Chris Barber. Wait a minute; perhaps I’m going too fast. Chris Barber? Didn’t he play trad jazz? Wasn’t that the antiquated novelty music of the early 1960’s done by the likes of The Temperance Seven, when people wore bowler hats and striped waistcoats? The answer is yes, and no.
Chris Barber celebrates his 75th birthday on 17 April and is one of the nicest people in the music business. A few years ago I interviewed him for Heartland FM at the Queen’s Hall in Edinburgh. I asked him if he could spare me ten minutes to talk about the origins of skiffle and forty-five minutes later the tape had run out and he was still talking!
Chris had led his first group as an amateur from 1949 to 1953 but the following year they brought in trumpeter Ken Colyer as leader. Colyer, born 18 April 1928 in Great Yarmouth, was a purist who was dedicated to New Orleans jazz.
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He joined the Merchant Navy and jumped ship in New Orleans to meet and play with his idol George Lewis. He joined the band - which included also Monty Sunshine on clarinet and Lonnie Donegan on banjo - on his release from prison after ignoring the expiry date on his visa!
The combination of Colyer’s first-hand experience of the New Orleans sound together with Barber’s music-school training and the entire band’s love of New Orleans jazz, immediately put them streets ahead of their rivals. However, after a year of personality clashes, the other members of the band voted out Colyer and chose Chris as their leader, and that’s how it has remained until this day.
But what was I saying at the beginning about being influential? Well, the Chris Barber Band is responsible for at least two Magic Moments that left an impression not only on the British jazz scene but also on the broader world of entertainment.
Skiffle
In 1955 the world became conscious of skiffle, chiefly through the singing of Glasgow-born Lonnie Donegan. Unlike the phrase rock’n’roll, which has dubious origins, the word skiffle was originally applied to home-made vocal and instrumental jazz, performed at rent parties in the late 1920’s in the United States.
To this, Lonnie added an element of country-style singing and when he recorded Leadbelly’s Rock Island Line in 1954 with Chris on bass and singer Beryl Bryden on washboard, the record was an immediate success, earning gold records in both the USA. and Britain.
Donegan’s music inspired thousands of teenagers to form amateur skiffle groups, playing such state-of-the-art instruments as tea-chest basses, washboards and kazoos. Incidentally, the early forms of amplification included miking-up the instruments using war-surplus tank commanders’ throat microphones played through a radio!
And the Beatles? As John Lennon said: “I think I was about 15. There was a big thing called skiffle. It’s a kind of American folk music, only sort of jing-jingo-jing-jingo-jing-jiggy, with washboards. All the kids - you know, 15 onwards - used to have these groups, and I formed The Quarry Men at school. Then I met Paul.”
Other notable skifflers included Hank B Marvin and Bruce Welch of The Shadows and Deep Purple’s Roger Glover AND over the years Chris Barber has influenced many of today’s leading Jazz and Blues musicians including contemporary artists such as Eric Clapton, Mark Knopfler, Eric Burdon, John Mayall, The Rolling Stones and Van Morrison.
Clarinet Classics
The other Magic Moment came in 1956 when clarinettist Monty Sunshine recorded a solo performance of Sidney Bechet’s Petite Fleur which, when released as a single three years later, earned the band two more gold records, paving the way for several other semi-pop clarinet features, notably Summer Set and, of course, Stranger on the Shore for Mr Acker Bilk.
Catch the Barber band in action and you’ll see no sign of the carpet slippers yet as Chris leads his 11-piece band playing a wide selection of his favourite music from his roots in New Orleans style such as Bourbon Street Parade (still his signature tune) to the early music of Duke Ellington, Sidney Bechet and Bob Crosby, to the blues of Sonny Terry & Brownie McGhee, the soul music of Joe Zawinul, the soulful blues of Miles Davis … and probably back to When the Saints Go Marching In!
Happy birthday, Chris, and long may you continue to break down entertainment barriers.
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