Jazz Legend Who Used To Be More Famous Than The Beatles To Perform Concert

A BONA fide jazz legend who formed a close friendship with The Beatles and has had his music played at Anfield is bringing an evening of world class jazz to Crawley.

The Big Chris Barber Band, described as Europe’s finest traditional jazz and blues band, are coming to The Hawth in January.

The band turned professional in 1953 and played the world famous Cavern Club in Liverpool, which will forever be associated with The Beatles, soon after it opened in 1957.

Before Beatlemania gripped the world The Big Chris Barber Band were headlining concerts in Liverpool and meeting the famous four for drinks afterwards.

Band leader Chris Barber said:

“The Cavern started as a popular jazz club and we were performing there and at the top of other concerts.

“The Beatles were an interval band in bars at this time that we would go to after our shows.

“Both being involved in music I would buy them drinks and got to know them very well.

“Paul McCartney was always straight talking and easy to get on with, whereas I found John Lennon to be too intense.

“It was George Harrison I got to know very well, though. He was an incredible man.”

Mr Barber and his band even recorded a song written by McCartney called Cat Call that was not chosen to be a Beatles song and was included on the album The Songs Lennon and McCartney Gave Away.

It was also released as a single in the UK in 1967.

Mr Barber added: “It was a time when Lennon and McCartney had written jokey-style songs and Paul even recorded it with us by playing the organ with his left hand.”

Mr Barber is so well respected that Van Morrison flew to perform at his 70th birthday party for free.

He also helped to introduce blues music to this country by bringing Muddy Waters to England for the first time in 1958, having previously performed with him in America.

Audiences were shocked by the loud guitar sound at first because their only previous exposure to blues had come via its more acoustic numbers.

Mr Barber formed his first band in 1949, aged 19, and has since gone on to become not only Europe’s most successful and influential bandleader but a renowned legend of the music genre.

However, it was by chance that he bought his first trombone - the instrument he is most famous for playing.

Mr Barber added: “I discovered jazz during the war when the school I attended was evacuated to Cambridge.

“While BBC radio wouldn’t play very much jazz at all the American Forces Network station did and I was hooked.

“Luckily Cambridge was one of only three places in the country that had record shops at the time selling jazz so I could buy Louis Armstrong.

“It was the violin I played at school, though, not through my own choice, and then one day aged 17 I was offered the chance to try a new instrument and buy a trombone.

“I wouldn’t say I was jumping at the opportunity but all I could think to ask was how much it was to buy.

“They said £6 and that happened to be the exact amount I had on me. I had no choice but to say yes.”

All these years later, aged 84, he is still going strong.

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Source: CrawleyNews.co.uk