New Chris Barber 6 CD Box Set Includes 105 Unreleased Tracks

Chris Barber (1930-2021) had a very long, productive and influential career. After brief periods playing the violin, cornet and clarinet, he settled on the trombone as a teenager, occasionally doubling on bass. He formed an amateur band in 1948 that had a recording session apiece in 1949 and 1950 with nearly all of the music going unissued for decades. The group, which was originally based in 1920s jazz, made some record dates for Esquire and Tempo in 1951, and the following year Barber felt confident enough to quit his day job and become a fulltime musician. In 1953 the personnel of his soon-to-be famous group solidified but under the leadership of trumpeter Ken Colyer. Banjoist-singer Lonnie Donegan (whose renditions of vintage folk songs launched the skiffle movement) and clarinetist Monty Sunshine both emerged as stars. However in mid-1954 Barber and Colyer went their separate ways. While the trumpeter wanted to stick exclusively to the type of ensemble-oriented New Orleans jazz that the late Bunk Johnson and George Lewis played, Barber dreamt of stretching out into other areas including early jazz, swing, Duke Ellington tunes, and blues while keeping his ears open to later musical developments. With Pat Halcox on trumpeter, the Chris Barber Jazz Band not only became very popular in England but was, after Humphrey Lyttleton switched to mainstream swing, the most important of
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Since 1975 Scott Yanow has been a regular reviewer of albums in many jazz styles. He has written for many jazz and arts magazines, including JazzTimes, Jazziz, Down Beat, Cadence, CODA, and the Los Angeles Jazz Scene, and was the jazz editor for Record Review. He has written an in-depth biography on Dizzy Gillespie for AllMusic.com. He has authored 11 books on jazz, over 900 liner notes for CDs and over 20,000 reviews of jazz recordings.

Yanow was a contributor to and co-editor of the third edition of the All Music Guide to Jazz. He continues to write for Downbeat, Jazziz, the Los Angeles Jazz Scene, the Jazz Rag, the New York City Jazz Record and other publications.

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