Chris Barber....

One of the most wonderful things about jazz, apart from the actual sound of it, is its history. In place of the ordered succession of composers' lives that forms the good, stiff, upright spine of academic music, you find a wild jumble of social history, big business, personal eccentricity, economics, faulty memory, downright lies, and a romantic streak wide enough for Ethel M. Dell to have danced a jig on!

A closer look will reveal an orderly principle underlying all this confusion, for like an amoeba, which multiplies by splitting into two parts, and each part into two again, jazz bands have been dividing and multiplying since before Buddy Bolden shaved his last customer! A band is formed. It does well or not, as the case may be. Sooner or later somebody decides to leave, or is thrown out. Either way, the result is the same -- a new band starts to form around him and the whole process begins over again.

The result of this process is that jazz groups in general are seldom in existence long enough to acquire a corporate life of their own. In a world where even two years is a long time for any aggregation of musicians to stay together, the exceptions tend to be conspicuous. In America, one immediately thinks of Duke Ellington and then of Count Basie; in Britain, of Chris Barber.

The Barber Band came into existence true to type, through the break-up of a previous group. The group in question, led by Ken Colyer in 1953/54 and including Monty Sunshine (clarinet), Lonnie Donegan (banjo), Jim Bray (bass), Ron Bowden (drums), with Chris and Ken, had been founded, in fact, by Monty and Chris in January 1953. Pat Halcox had joined them on trumpet, but was concerned about his day-time job as a research chemist.

Then, news was received of Ken Colyer's imminent release from New Orleans Parish Prison! He had, we hasten to add, been confined there for allowing his zeal for jazz to encourage him to ignore the expiry date on his visa. Chris and the others knew that Ken had no day-job responsibilities, so they invited him to join in place of the reluctant Halcox, and, in fact, to lead the band. The combination of Ken's first-hand experience of the New Orleans idiom and Chris's music-school training, together with the entire group's love of New Orleans jazz, immediately put the band streets ahead of any other group at that time.

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