When Chris Barber died, aged 90, in March, he had only recently retired after leading a band for 70 years. You can’t celebrate that with an album and a few notes, especially with music as popular and wide-ranging as his. So what we have here is a package of four CDs and a book tracing Barber’s career as one track follows another. With its leader playing trombone, and occasionally double bass, Chris Barber’s Jazz Band combined New Orleans-style traditional jazz with whatever else caught his fancy. The results were sometimes quite spectacular.
The eighth of these 69 tracks, from 1956, has the band’s banjo player, Lonnie Donegan, singing Rock Island Line with bass and washboard accompaniment. It sparked a nationwide craze for amateur skiffle groups, without which there would have been no Beatles. Unlike other trad bands, Barber’s never got stuck in a rut. Every record, every tour was a fresh start. As the tracks roll on we hear blues, gospel, ragtime and guest stars such as Louis Jordan, Joe Harriott, Sister Rosetta Tharpe, Dr John, Sonny Terry and Brownie McGhee. One late recording, from 2010, features a lively Jools Holland.
