In April, 2002, a lengthy interview with Chris Barber appeared in the American jazz and blues magazine, Cadence. The interview covers a lot of ground, including Chris's introduction to jazz in the 1940s, his first band, and the formation of the Colyer band and then Chris Barber's Jazz Band. He also talks about his promotion of tours in the UK by American artists like Muddy Waters and Sister Rosetta Tharpe, the ragtime album ("Elite Syncopations"), playing in the USA, the electric experiments of the late 1960s, and much more.

Cadence magazine has kindly granted me permission to reproduce a 500-word excerpt from the interview, and so I have chosen Chris's story of how Paul McCartney's "Cat Call" came to be recorded.

Chris Barber: ... so Giorgio [Gomelsky] really encouraged us to do things and one of the things was Battersea Rain Dance.

Cadence: Paul McCartney was on that wasn't he?

Chris Barber: Well, yeah, there was a song ["Cat Call"]. I went to see him. I knew him anyway and I went to see him and just said "Listen. You've recorded hundreds of titles and hundreds more that you haven't released. Surely there must be something you've written which you aren't going to record or release." So he said "Yeah, I've got one here which is actually an instrumental. It's kind of a joke because it's a song. There's this band playing this tune and there's an audience of people there and when the band starts playing this tune about three quarters of the way through this record they build up to a climax and the audience start booing and demand that they stop and play it different. So then the band stops and starts playing it different and the audience starts cheering and it fades out" (laughs). They were going in for these kind of back-handed jokes, like the ending part of "All You Need Is Love," you know what I mean, at that time, so it was just a little humorous idea. So he was quite keen for us to do it, so he came along. When Paul McCartney gives you a tune he's written that no one else has recorded, and they haven't recorded it, and offers to come and produce it and even play on it, you don't say no, do you (laughs)? Not really, I mean we were pleased to, anyway. So he came along and we recorded it as a straight number first of all and then we went in again to a different studio with a lot of various friends in the studio and so on and recorded the production version of it with all the production elements that make it what it is, the piece, so it didn't get anywhere. To make it as a single, it was released as a single, would probably have taken an investment which the company couldn't afford, so whereas of course the Beatles had enough money there if they wanted to make something a hit, they could afford to put enough money in for it to do it but Paul wasn't interested in doing that (laughs). At least we never thought of asking him for that, come to think of it. We should have asked him for help in the promotion of it but there we are, we didn't.

Excerpt reproduced by permission.

Copyright Cadence Magazine, 2002
Cadence Magazine
Cadence Building
Redwood, New York, USA
Phone: (315) 287 2852
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E-mail: cadence@cadencebuilding.com