Chris Barber - R.I.P.

 CHRIS BARBER

As well as losing Bunny Wailer yesterday and losing toaster U Roy late last month we lost another legendary ground breaking musician. Now I didn't probably appreciate Chris Barber enough until hearing about his contribution to skiffle through the work of Lonnie Donnegan around the time of his album with Van Morrison who revisited that legendary tradition musical source of folk music ( for that was what it proved to be) and 'trad jazz' as it was called had left me somewhat cold at the time, just more white folks playing black music of origin to these ears but he deserves closer inspection and I read Billy Bragg's wonderful tribute to him.

l - r Ken Colyer, Alexis Korner, Lonnie Donegan, Seated Bill Colyer and Chris

"Sorry to hear of the death of Chris Barber, one of the giants of the UK jazz scene, but also a founding father of British guitar-based pop and rock. He played a crucial role in the birth of the skiffle movement. In the early 1950s, he was the trombone-playing leader of a trad jazz band that featured Lonnie Donegan on banjo. When they came to record their first LP 'New Orleans Joys' on 13th July 1954, his commitment to African-American roots music meant that he was happy to play double bass on Donegan's recording of 'Rock Island Line'.

When this cover of a Lead Belly standard was released as a single in December 1955, it ignited the skiffle craze in the UK. In the following 18 months, sales of guitars in the UK rocketed from 5,000 in 1955 to 250,000 in 1957. Skiffle proved to be the nursery of for the British rock stars of the 1960s. Chris Barber continued to influence the UK scene by inviting US blues artists to tour with his jazz band, bringing the likes of Big Bill Broonzy, Muddy Waters and Sister Rosetta Tharpe to British and European audiences.

In 2015, at a concert celebrating the music of Lead Belly, I shared a dressing room with him at the Royal Albert Hall where he regaled me with tales of seeing Broonzy open for Mahalia Jackson in the early 1950s. Knowing of my interest in skiffle, the organisers had invited me to sing 'Rock Island Line' and I was greatly honoured that night to have Chris play double-bass on the song.

He was a real gent and his influence on British rock music of the 50s and 60s was immense. He's pictured above playing double bass during a skiffle breakdown session in 1953 with other founding fathers."

Billy Bragg 

from his Facebook page

A favourite from the Skiffle Sessions - Good Morning Blues

 

 Ken Colyer's Jazmen - Lonnie and Chris Barber  

 Another favorite song Chris Barber and His Jazzmen - It's Tight Like That!  

 

Good Night Irene 

LONNIE DONEGAN

Aw heck! No I've gone wandering about t'internetwebbie thingamabob and found this. An early hero, (the earliest?) and I adored everything this man did from My Old Man's a Dustman (word perfect) to his sessions with old friends Van Morrison and Chris Barber
This is where it really started for me and  . . . . . . 'twas ever thus. Say what you like but jeans hanging off bottoms and trainers the size of canal boats all came from the same place as drapes and crepe souled shoes or 'brothel creepers' long hair and velvet loons! It was all the same stuff . . . .and still is

and here's why

ROCK AROUND THE CLOCK!!

Well I know I am old but not quite this old and no I didn't buy this track when it came out thank you!! . . . HOWEVER it is a seminal track for me in my introduction to music and I took this and a couple of others for granted somehow. It could have been that my brother Steve was somehow responsible but my parent's being almost exclusively classical in their tastes, it remains a mystery now that my earliest memory of Rock and Roll and Skiffle come from the family owning a 78' record player, wind up and with a horn and a very particular smell somehow. I recall the felt disc platter and the needles but the first 78 that I still have somewhere, that I heard and haunted me forever with it's slap bass and guitar based and special drum beat was this track by 'Bill Haley and his Comets' and along with some Paul Robeson discs, a copy of Lonnie Donnigan's 'Puttin on The Style' both were rarely off the wind up gramophone in my earliest years. Can you dig it? I think you can!

On this day in music history: July 9, 1955 - “(We’re Gonna) Rock Around The Clock” by Bill Haley And His Comets hits #1 on the Billboard Best Sellers chart for 8 weeks. Recorded on April 12, 1954 at the Pythian Temple in New York City, the song goes largely unnoticed when it is initially released in May of 1954 as the B-side of the single “Thirteen Women (And Only One Man In Town)”. It is only after it is used for the opening title sequence to the film “The Blackboard Jungle” (starring Glenn Ford), nearly a year later that record finally takes off. Entering the Best Sellers chart at #22 on May 21, 1955, it climbs to the top of the chart seven weeks later. The song creates a sensation around the world, causing teenagers to riot and dance in the aisles of movie theaters. It is regarded as a landmark in music history as the first number one single of the Rock Era. The record also earns a place in the Guinness World Book Of Records for the largest selling rock and roll record of all time, with sales to be estimated at over 25 million copies sold worldwide. “(We’re Gonna) Rock Around The Clock” is certified Gold in the US by the RIAA, and is inducted into the Grammy Hall Of Fame in 1982.

with thanks to Jeff Harris' wonderful blog 'Behind The Grooves  On this day in Music History