Chris:
Well, here we are touring England again. We are not in the UK as much as some places, and we are in Yeovil. We have not been here for a while. I remember Yeovil from the Terry Thomas film School For Scoundrels, where he played Stephen Potter, the man who invented one-upmanship. As far as I can remember it was set in Yeovil.
JP:
A black-and-white film? Chris: Black-and-white, yes, an old film. I asked someone in the band if they liked it, and they said they had never even heard of it, which shows that some of us are older than others, really. (Laughs). Anyhow we got through the continent in January without mishap, without particular mishap at least. We are touring Britain again now, doing several concerts with Acker and Kenny, which is quite enjoyable, to see friends again. We didn’t see them at all at one time, but now we meet them quite often, and now we are on the part of the tour where we play our own concert, which is very nice also. The problem playing in the Three Bs concerts, and concerts of that ilk, has always been that we have a two-hour programme which we work to all the time with the band, and if we only get fifty minutes to play, what do we leave out? There’s bound to be something people want to hear and we like to play, and we always feel vaguely uncomfortable having to leave out so much good stuff that we like to play every night. But we manage alright; we put a programme together that makes sense as far as we can and try to give a reasonable share to all the bands, including ourselves. So far it seems to have worked pretty well, I am happy to say. Quite a surprise, really, because in show business the received wisdom has always been rather that people who have a popular format should stick to it or else they’ll be in real trouble. We’ve been actually doing the opposite for nearly fifty years, I think! (Laughs). If we like it, we do it.
JP: You’ve pushed the boundaries, you have always sort of evolved.
Chris: Yes, we have always just done things we wanted to do, because long before I played the trombone I had records of music which is more modern than we play now. It isn’t modern at all, it is old, Charlie Parker, it is old now. Actually Bebop in the Charlie Parker sense probably sounds more dated than King Oliver’s band. In other words you can specify exactly when it was made, and what sort of suits they wore and everything when you hear a few bars of a Bebop record. With Parker’s band and some of the Dance Band records, you can see the funny wing collars they wore, and the mafia haircuts, but King Oliver’s Band’s music doesn’t sound dated at all, it isn’t dated in any way, the Hot Five and the Hot Seven. I like Bebop; I remember one of my first records was Charlie Parker’s Cool Blues — a lovely record with Errol Garner on piano, a gorgeous record, I have still got, I still have the actual copy now I come to think of it! And so far from going modern the band has managed only to get as far forward as something or other, whatever it is, but then again we just do what we like! If we hear something good we like to play it. We’d rather assume that everybody in the world, if they hear something they like, even by accident, will listen to it again. If they don’t like it they don’t bother listening to it again. We are exactly the same only we play it, instead of listening to it! (another laugh). What do you think Julian, you think the same way as I do, I think?
JP: Yes, I listen all kinds of music, different styles. I was listening to a newish trio from the States — Hot Club of Cowtown, they have been on Later With Jools Holland twice recently, they play mainly country.
Chris:
I remember holidaying in America years ago, I saw a television programme which was a televised version of a radio programme where they had the country and western band which had Chet Atkins in it playing guitar, and all good players, a fiddle as well, but they also had a cornet, clarinet and drums, a Dixieland band virtually! They played a variety of stuff, Chet Atkins and the fiddle player played a Reinhardt-Grappelli duet type thing, in fact it was Sweet Georgia Brown, and they did a Dixieland number and all kinds of things, not very far removed from what we do, although the basic programme was country and western songs. It’s amazing how broad some musics are which you don’t realise, when you hear just one facet of it. People think a band like mine plays Whistlin‘ Rufus all the time. We did play it, and if we could play it better we would probably still play it now. When we started out playing skiffle, it was not real jazz, some people grumbled, then about twenty years later they said it was wonderful when we played that skiffle. „But this Macedonian music you like playing is rubbish“: as I said to them twenty years ago, „You said skiffle was rubbish. I wonder what you will dislike in twenty years‘ time when you tell me how good the Macedonian stuff used to be.“
JP: You had to stop playing certain stuff before people realised they actually liked it!
Chris:
Yes, that’s right, and of course we recorded I’d Love It in our Festival Hall Concert in October 1954 with Bertie King playing alto sax, doing things just like things we do now, which Bob Hunt arranges for us, with the Big Chris Barber Band, the same kind of things, just like the numbers we do now. We always had in mind to do these sorts of things, in those days, with the Ellington tunes, but we didn’t have the instrumentation to afford the tone colour varieties that that music really deserves, like Black and Tan Fantasy particularly, which I am so proud of the version we have got now. Bob has arranged it, so we can do just what makes it sound like Black and Tan Fantasy ought to sound, it is a wonderful feeling to be able to do that. We always did those tunes. I recorded Misty Morning with my first band in 1950 (laughs again). The same arrangement, I might add!
JP: You have a big gig coming up in June, the Lonnie Donegan Memorial Concert?
Chris:
Well, I haven’t got, they have. It’s a kind of tribute concert to Lonnie at the Albert Hall. I understand that the world and his wife have offered to be guests on it, and it is going to be quite interesting how they manage that. The last time we did the Albert Hall when Lonnie was on that Skiffle Revival concert, four or five years ago now, it was quite funny, because at the end of it all they had that circular stage in the centre which Cliff Richard had built, because he was there for a whole week doing a show. It was Cliff Richard’s stage. Lonnie stood in the middle of that up on top, and all his acolytes, Bruce Welch, Joe Brown, all excellent people, were standing one level down, below his feet all the way round it, and I thought only Lonnie could carry it off. So quite how they will stage it I don’t know, but I am sure they will, I am sure they will manage it, and I said I was happy to go along. Van Morrison asked me was I going to be there as he was relying on me to play the bass, when he gets up and does a couple of skiffle numbers. I said yes, okay I will be there, so I have got to borrow Vic Pitt’s bass, so I shall have to warn him. I have offered to take along the present Six-Piece Band, which after all is representative of Lonnie’s first band when he played with us. Sharon (Donegan) said she didn’t know if they had time. So yes, it is a big event.
JP: Thank you very much on behalf of the fans.