Chris Barber Presents The Blues Legacy Lost & Found is a three-CD set of blues masterpieces recorded in the late 1950s, the early 1960s, with the Jimmy Witherspoon portion from 1980. The story of how these CDs came into being is every bit as interesting as the music.
Chris Barber is relatively unknown to most Americans unless you happen to be an aficionado of traditional jazz, also called New Orleans or Dixieland style jazz. His reputation in the rest of the world and mainly Europe is one of a true bastion of blues and jazz music.
Chris Barber began his professional musical journey in 1949 when, at age 19 and having been strongly influenced by the King Oliver Creole Jazz Band, he formed his first Barber New Orleans Band. In 1953 he formed, with Monty Sunshine and Lonnie Donegan (of later skiffle fame), Chris Barber’s Jazz Band. He’s played in all parts of the world since, and although the musicians in the group may have changed over the years, his renown has done nothing but expand and improve. This is exemplified by his band picking up three additional musicians in 2001, and by his surpassing 10,000 performances worldwide during his career.
Barber was instrumental in introducing many American blues musicians to Europe, with those included in this set among them. This music originally came to Europe in volume first with the American soldiers and airmen stationed in England during World War II, and second, with the sailors and crews on American ships. It didn’t take long for the music to gain a strong following.
Barber’s role in this cannot be overstated: He was one of the first, if not the first, to introduce American jazz and blues to England and Europe with live music. Period. From there, the influence of American music led musicians such as Alexis Korner, Long John Baldry, the Yardbirds, the Kinks, Eric Clapton, the Animals, the Rolling Stones, John Mayall, Led Zeppelin, Van Morrison, The Who, Aerosmith and the Beatles to base their music on it. All the musicians on these three CDs were brought to England for the first time by Barber.
Following this European craze, the blues was re-introduced to the United States by these very same English musicians, which resulted in the inclusion of blues in the Newport Folk Festivals beginning in 1964, and the subsequent Blues Revival in the US. (If this period of English and American Blues history interests you, watch for my upcoming review of It Ain’t Easy: Long John Baldry and the Birth of the British Blues, later this month.)
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