Miscellaneous Stuff..... Discography • If you are a serious Barber fan, you need to own A Life in Music: The Chris Barber Discography 1949-2001. This comprehensive work, compiled by Gerard Bielderman & Julian Purser, is described on a separate web page in this site, together with an example (familiar to most fans) of how the discography is presented. Tours and Concerts • Two concert programmes, 1954. • Concert programme, 1957. • Tour program cover and photographs, 1958. • Cover and some pages from the Program for the 11th Annual Jazz Concert, New Orleans, 1959. • Concert programme, 1960. • Programme for the tour with Louis Jordan, December 1962. • Tour program cover, 1984 (?). • Tour program cover, early 1990s. • Leaflet advertising a Chris Barber/Lonnie Donegan tour of England and Scotland, 1993. • Thanks to Chris Robins, here are a leaflet and ticket from a June 11 2003 concert in Basingstoke, part of the 50th anniversary tour of the Big Chris Barber Band. Photographs • Photographs of Chris Barber and the band. • Niklaus Zust of Switzerland has been a Chris Barber fan for over forty years and a friend of Chris and the band since the early 1970s. Here is a photo of Niklaus and Chris taken by Pat Halcox in 1992. This photo is Copyright Niklaus Zust: used by permission. • Here is a wonderful photograph of the original Ken Colyer's Jazzmen, taken in 1953 or 1954. • While the world wide web offers tremendous advantages in terms of access to information that few would have even dreamed of a decade ago, one of its drawbacks is that websites and web pages change locations or disappear entirely. With this in mind, I have created an archive of all of the photographs of the Chris Barber Band that I have been able to locate on various websites. You can see thumbnail versions of these photographs in a series of "Photo archive pages" by clicking on Photo Archive #1 and following the links at the foot of that and subsequent pages. [Important disclaimer: I do not own any of these photographs or the rights to reproduce them. They are included here in low-resolution format purely as a public service archive.] The Chris Barber Club: Fan Club Booklets from the 1950s and 1960s For several years in the 1950s and early 1960s, the Chris Barber Club produced a monthly fan club booklet. Eventually I will include most of these in the website, but here to begin with is Volume 1, Numer 1 (Summer 1956): • Chris Barber Club, Vol. 1, No. 1 (Summer 1956). Excerpts from Books and Magazines • It's interesting to look back more than forty years and read about how the Barber Band (and its predecessor, Ken Colyer's Jazzmen) was received by some of the leading critics. Here are excerpts from Barber and Colyer reviews in Jazz On Record: A Critical Guide (1960). • As with many musical fads, the "trad boom" of the early 1960s saw a flurry of quickie books designed to cash in on public interest. I bought a couple of these books back then; here is the chapter (plus photos) about the Barber band from Trad by Ivan Berg and Ian Yeomans. • Here are some excerpts from George Melly's book, Revolt Into Style: The Pop Arts In Britain (1970), in which Melly discusses post-war revivalist jazz, skiffle, and the "trad boom" of the early 1960s. • Cover of a Sunday Times colour section from June, 1962 featuring Ottilie Patterson and Chris Barber. • Cat Call: Excerpt from an interview published in Cadence magazine. • Best Of Both Worlds: Insights into the early-1960s tours and recordings with Louis Jordan and Edmond Hall. Radio • Interview with Chris Barber in June, 2002, recorded for CBC Radio in Vancouver, British Columbia. • Chris Barber on Desert Island Discs, 1958. • Here are covers I designed for CDs of Chris's Summer 2003 BBC Radio 2 programme, Spirit Of New Orleans. Miscellany • Here's a neat little news item I found while web-surfing: "Seeing Double!" • A page to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the recording of From New Orleans to London, by Ken Colyer's Jazzmen, September 1953. • The popularity of Lonnie and Chris's "Rock Island Line" inspired tens of thousands of British children and teenagers to take up the guitar and form a skiffle group. I was no exception; in about 1958 my Dad bought me a guitar and my brother Mike and I formed our own group. We did perform in public a few times but obviously did not go on to the fame and fortune of another skiffle group, The Quarrymen. Maybe it's because we never seemed to be able to play in any other key than E, which was the key of "It Takes A Worried Man," the first tune in my Lonnie Donegan Skiffle Songbook. Art of Chris Barber home page || Contents page || The Band || Records || Photographs || Poster || Record covers || Definitive Collection || Julian Purser page || Links