Bandbox No. 1

'Sleeve Notes:

Chris Barber, together with his Jazz Band and singer Ottilie Patterson, forms one of the phenomena of post-war Show Business. Playing a music that, ten years ago, was considered by the bookers lucky to have an audience numbered in hundreds, he leads today a band which has proved itself the biggest musical draw in Britain. Having displaced the big swing bands, the Latin-y locals, the treacle-tuned dance bands and all other hot groups in the battle to win the public's favour, the Barber band proceeded, in 1957, to sell in this country the equivalent of close on a million 78 rpm discs. At the beginning of 1959, the band's record of Petite Fleur – a clarinet speciality featuring Monty Sunshine – had alone sold more than this number of copies, after roosting in the German Top Ten and fighting its way up to No. 2 in the fiercely competitive American Top Hundred sellers, besides getting into Britain's top five pops. Not bad going for a traditional trifle making no concessions at all to commercialism!

In Britain, the band is assured of a sell-out whenever it appears at clubs, concerts or dance halls, and of maximum audience reaction at every radio and TV 'Exposure'. Chris and Ottilie, as solo guest stars, were invited to Denmark in 1952 and Holland in 1955 respectively – and the band as a whole enjoyed enormous success in tours of Denmark in 1954 and 1958; of Holland in 1956,1957 and (twice) in 1958; of Sweden in 1958, and of Germany in 1958 and again this year coincidentally with the issue of this record. In addition, an immensely successful American tour of major dates in February and March of 1959 made it only the second band (and certainly the first ever traditional jazz group) to reverse jazz history and make the East-West Atlantic crossing!

What, then, is the formula for this success? How has what was once a minority appeal music come to be so formidable a force in the entertainment world?

One vital quality made this possible. Enthusiasm! Enthusiasm it was that inspired Chris Barber to form his first band in 1949, when he was still an apprentice actuary with an insurance company. It was fiery enthusiasm that drove him to give up his safe career in the City and turn professional musician to play the King Oliver music he so much admired; that permitted him to go through an agonising reappraisal and disband that first successful group because, in the end, he found the rigidities of strict New Orleans style too confining; and that enabled him to form another which, through many ups and downs, finally boosted him and his music to the position it holds in the business today.

It was the same quality of excited awareness that encouraged him to take on, in 1954, the then unknown singer from Northern Ireland, Ottilie Patterson, with the unshakable conviction that she would (as she did) soon win for herself a star position with the emotional impact of her singing. And it was enthusiasm again that prompted Chris to pioneer in this country the production of long-playing records taped 'live' from concert appearances – so that the disc buyers could share with the audiences in the theatres that urgent immediacy, superb sense of showmanship and sheer creative excitement which is so peculiarly the Barber band's own.

'On this record, as on most of the LP's we ever made', says Chris, 'we have tried to strike a balance of all the kinds of music we cover – a canvas that, from the jazz point of view, is as broad as we can find. This enables us to find an outlet for all types of playing, for we don't restrict ourselves to one example of the music: we'll play anything, if we think it sounds nice when we play it!

'The music on this disc thus ranges from 1904-1905 ragtime to 1958 Count Basie work; from early vocal vaudeville jazz to such modernities as John Lewis's Golden Striker. Monty plays a new Sidney Bechet number, Si Tu Vois Ma Mère; we managed to persuade Ottilie to make one of her rare visits to the keyboard to accompany herself on Squeeze Me because we think she plays pretty good piano.

'We put in the old Jay C. Higginbotham-Henry Allen speciality Give Me Your Telephone Number. We play Swanee River (Jive Around Stephen Foster if you like!) and there's even the Mary Martin number from 'South Pacific', I'm Gonna Wash That Man Right Out Of My Hair, in there…'

No trombone specialities? 'Not really', says the diffident Mr Barber. 'I prefer to get my kicks more on the arranging side. There were some quite tricky problems here. Hot House Rag, for instance, is a transcription from a piano rag to a band piece. So, in its very different way, is Golden Striker. Both of these, as you can imagine, presented some difficulty.'

Both of them, however – like every single track on this record – are successful; both go like a bomb; both swing; both are entertaining ... and both display, in nicely judged proportions, that verve, élan, zest or what you will, which, coupled with its unerring sense of jazz rightness, makes Chris Barber's Jazz Band deservedly the most popular in the country.'[discogs]