Pye Nixa NJL 6
Nixa Jazz Today Series
10” LP
Recorded at the Royal Festival Hall, London 15/12/56

Tracks

Side 1
(a) Bourbon Street Parade (Barbarin)
(b) New Blues (Barber)
(c) Willy The Weeper (Melrose, Bloom, Rymal)
(d) Mean Mistreater (vocal-Ottilie Patterson)
(e) Yama Yama Man (Davis, Hoschna)
(f) Old Man Mose (Armstrong, Randolph)
(vocal-Chris Barber and band)

Side 2
(a) Mood Indigo (Ellington, Bigard, Mills)
(b) Bearcat Crawl (Lewis) (piano solo-Ottilie Patterson)
(c) Lowland Blues (Broonzy) (vocal and piano-Ottilie Patterson, acc. by Johnny Duncan-guitar and Chris Barber-bass)
(d) Panama (Tyres)
(e) Finale: Bourbon Street Parade (Barbarin) introducing
When The Saints Go Marching In
(New words and new music by Chris Barber)

Sleeve notes

A blisteringly hot day in early summer; the trees in the Thames-side meadows shimmer in the haze; couples lolling on the warm grass by the towpath seem transfixed by the heat – or is it by the sight and sound of the steamer cruising upriver from Richmond, with two jazz bands beating it out on the scorched planks of the fo’estle deck, half a hundred dedicated fans jiving on the poop and two hundred more dancing frenziedly amidships?

It is 1949. The London Jazz Club is indulging in Britain’s first-ever” riverboat shuffle”. And in the steamer’s cockpit a freckled, straw-haired boy nervously raises a trombone to his lips, preparing to blow his first-ever note in public. Jazz on the river seems as daring and romantic to him as it does to the towpath couples under the beating sun; none of them realise that, in seven short years, jazz music will have come to be so universally accepted in Britain that it will occasion no comment if the biggest draw of all in the concert world should be – a jazz band. Certainly the freckle-faced boy, an actuary-in-training at an insurance company, has no idea that he will be the leader of such a band. Even though his name is Chris Barber.

And yet, when this LP was recorded, at a Royal Festival Hall concert in December, 1956, Barber actually was leader of the biggest musical draw in the country – a band so successful that, in the course of its nation-wide one-night stands, its Sunday concerts, its radio and TV and jazz club appearances, it had displaced the famous swing bands, the palais orchestras, the Latin American groups, the traditional jazz units and all other opposition in the fight to win the public’s esteem!

The links between Chris Barber, the diffident son of a statistician and a headmistress, who first played in public on the river in 1949, and Chris Barber the successful bandleader, a household name and owner of three expensive sports cars in 1957, were forged in the fire of enthusiasm kindled that sunny afternoon when Chris found himself blowing in the company of such famous jazzmen as Humphrey Lyttelton, Wally Fawkes and the members of the Dutch Swing College, all of whom were guesting on the riverboat shuffle.

It was very shortly after this, to quote Chris himself, that “my interest in jazz got the better of my mathematical concentration-and the insurance firm and I decided to part company…”

With Ken Colyer and Lonnie Donegan (both of them Show Business notabilities, too, today) he formed a band with the traditional two-trumpet lead employed by the late and great Joe “King” Oliver in the days of the beginnings of jazz. With this group, unashamedly based as it was on the New Orleans style of the early twenties, Barber went into intensive rehearsal in the winter of 1949, making his first public appearance as a leader in a jazz band contest run by the National Federation of Jazz Organisations at London’s Empress Hall in the Spring of 1950. Six months later, he opened his own jazz club, named – and it is self-evident that he was still on a violently pro-Oliver kick! – the Lincoln Gardens Jazz Club…

Thus, for three years, he progressed-until, in March, 1953, broadened somewhat in taste, he broke the band up, immediately forming another, distinctive in that it used no piano, with the help of the clarinettist, Monty Sunshine, and trumpeter Pat Halcox. A co-operative venture like the former group, this band differed in that it hoped to turn fully professional and make a living out of jazz. Surprisingly, it made the grade-but in so doing, lost the name of Barber as leader, Pat Halcox standing down in favour of Ken Colyer and the latter taking over the leadership by virtue of his drawing power as a man who had actually been to New Orleans and played there!

For a year, the band prospered under Colyer’s lead, and then he and Halcox switched a second time – the leadership again reverting to Barber. Since then it has remained practically unchanged – with one very important exception. An exception named Ottilie Patterson.

Since the band first heard the astonishing singing of this ex-art teacher from Ulster in August, 1954, when she was holidaying in England, since they first implored her to join them on the same night, Ottilie has won for herself a permanent and unshakable niche in the affections of the British jazz and Variety public by the authenticity and emotional impact of her fabulous blues singing.

Together with the Barber band, today she enjoys a successful routine as one of the country’s top attractions of all time – a routine embodying two dates at London clubs, one day off, and four out-of-town dates each week.

This LP, marking the Third Anniversary of the present Chris Barber Jazz Band, brings you, the listener, a typical example of one of these dates: with the exception of a couple of skiffle pieces, here is a whole concert captured on disc – a living example of just what good British jazz can be, and why the Barber brand of it, in particular, is so intensely successful all round the country…

Personnel

Chris Barber-trombone: Pat Halcox-trumpet:
Monty Sunshine-clarinet: Ron Bowden-drums:
Eddie Smith-banjo: Dick Smith-bass

Sleeve:
Design: Ian Bradbery
Photography: Walter Hanlon

Recording:
Balance: Eric Tomlinson
Supervision: Denis Preston