I have been trying very hard, but I cannot remember when I first became interested in Traditional Jazz and discovered Chris Barber. I must have been about 14 years old and I must have heard it on BBC Radio’s Saturday Club. Trad – a term Chris disliked – was very popular, but by 1962 it was starting to lose popularity. It is difficult to know why you are drawn to a particular music, but there was something about the sound I liked. Again, how you filter various bands out until you have a favourite is something of a mystery. Somehow, I had whittled it down to the bands of Acker Bilk, Terry Lightfoot, and, of course, Chris Barber. As my interest developed, the bands of Ken Colyer, Humphrey Lyttelton, Sandy Brown and Alex Welsh would enter my orbit, but Chris would remain a constant. Records had entered my life, I had several by Lonnie Donegan and, of course, made the connection with Chris.
Coventry was my home city and I would go to the Coventry Theatre and see Acker, Chris, Kenny Ball and The Temperance Seven. At school my history teacher was the Entertainments Officer for a local council. He knew I was interested in Jazz and asked me who I would recommend for a Jazz concert. I suggested Chris’s band and so in 1964 I met Chris (and Ottilie Patterson) little knowing that almost 30 years later I would start working with him.
Maybe it is pure nostalgia, but that was one of my favourite line-ups of the band: Chris, Pat Halcox, Ian Wheeler, Eddie Smith, Dick Smith and Graham Burbidge. Lovely rhythm section and the start of my realisation of how good Ian was. My record collection was expanding. My Mother grumbled at me for buying records as “they won’t get you anywhere”. Eventually records would become my full-time job and I would release 600 albums! Before long I had the Birmingham, Brighton and Palladium concerts plus various EPs and a “Best of Barber and Bilk”. Between the ages of 16 and 19 there was a flurry of activity. I learned to play the double bass, got a Saturday job in a record shop and started to play the drums. Along the way my jazz knowledge increased and discovered recordings of the Jazz pioneers whose names had appeared on record sleeve notes. From King Oliver through Duke Ellington to Eddie Condon, Bunk Johnson and George Lewis. Around this time, I started a correspondence with Ottilie. I cannot remember how that came about and, sadly, over the years the letters have gone missing.
As if this wasn’t enough, I had developed an interest in Folk music. This was something else that would loom large in my recording career. In 1966 I went off to London as a student. I discovered Ken Colyer’s Studio 51 Club, the 100 Club and, nearest to where I was based, the Wood Green Jazz Club. At Wood Green I saw the superb Alex Welsh Band and met Steve Lane, band leader and partner in VJM records.
Fast forward: I had studied Theatre Arts and Educational Drama and had teaching jobs in Essex, back in Coventry and finally in West Cumbria. I met Linda who would later become my wife and business partner. Linda was involved in Folk music, we started to sing together and made three albums. This introduced me to small record labels. I was also freelancing with BBC local radio – presenting, script writing and continuity announcing. This introduced me to the world of microphones, mixers and tape recorders. I am not sure how it happened, but I was asked by a magazine to review Jazz records and the first ones I was sent were the Black Lion “Chris Barber Story Vol. 1-3” LPs. Chris had wandered back into my life. My father-in-law was interested in Jazz and for his birthday we took him to a concert in Whitehaven by Chris’s band. This was my first experience of the Jazz & Blues line-up.
In 1976 we formed our fledgling record company, Fellside Recordings. It would eventually become a leading Folk music label although in the early days we did various things including a Jazz LP with George Chisholm and Mick Potts’ Gateway Jazz Band from Carlisle. I continued with a full-time job, but once our son was born in 1978 Linda did not go back to work, but ran the office for Fellside. I was learning as a recording engineer and, fortunately, had an aptitude for it. People have asked me to teach them, but I can only teach them how the equipment works. I cannot teach them how to balance instruments on a recording: they can either hear it or they cannot. I must have been doing something right because the trade publication, Music Week, said “The quality puts most small companies to shame”.
Along the way I felt I wanted to have a Jazz label and in 1985 we launched LAKE Records. Fellside largely generated its own recordings but for LAKE I wanted a mixture of re-issues and self-recorded items. I was a bit limited because the late Brian Hainsworth was re-issuing the old Pye Jazz Today series on his Dormouse label. There was nothing to stop me licensing the recordings, but I did not want to encroach on what Brian was doing. I approached Polygram who owned the Recording Supervision material, which had appeared on Columbia’s Lansdowne Jazz Series, but they wanted far too much money. They wanted me to guarantee to sell 5,000 units, but by this time the Jazz market for this style of Jazz was a small niche and we struggled to sell 1,000 of most albums. That left Decca. Decca was part of Polygram, but had a degree of autonomy and I managed to get a good deal with them. The catalogue included Ken Colyer, Alex Welsh, Chris and the Tempo label.
I started with Ken Colyer’s recordings, a collection of singles and EPs. It took time to establish the label, but the signs were encouraging. Apart from Dormouse, no one else was doing it and we discovered there was a solid niche market for British Traditional Jazz. Brian Hainsworth was doing a good job with Dormouse; we kept in touch and were never rivals. Sadly, Brian passed away and so I felt I could access the Pye label. Polygram was taken over by Universal and were more amenable than Polygram had been, so I could not get the Lansdowne Jazz Series recordings – Denis Preston’s Recording Supervision tapes.
Two things made the label viable. The Universal deal wanted advance royalties of £2,000 and this is where Chris became an asset. Not many albums sold enough copies to justify the advance, but Chris’s band sold five or six times the amount other bands did, so effectively subsidised releases of other bands. The other thing was, we started to do mail order, so our return on each record was greater than if we sold through shops. Without mail order and later website sales, the label would have folded. Chris, because the band was working, started to buy albums to sell on gigs. He made more money doing this than relying on the royalties from Universal. This, in turn, helped us. However, I am getting ahead of myself here with regards to Chris
In the early 1990s I got to meet Chris again. One of my friends, Johnny Smyth, was the music organiser for the Brewery Arts Centre in Kendal and was a fan of the Barber band. I went to one of the gigs Johnny organised. I was chatting to Pat who said “come and have a word with Chris”. So that was it, one thing led to another. I had a new piece of equipment to try out and Chris suggested I recorded the band when it was appearing at the Sands Centre in Carlisle. It was 1994 and one of the reunion tours, so I got to meet Monty Sunshine, Lonnie, Ron Bowden and Jim Bray. Through the Keswick Jazz Festival, where he would be a regular, I got to know Monty quite well.
Thus began me starting to work with Chris. The people I got to know well over the years were John Crocker, Vic Pitt, John Slaughter and, of course, Pat. When other people came into the line-up I had already worked with Colin Miller, Bob Hunt, Mike Henry and Pete Rudeforth before they joined. My 1994 recordings of the reunion tour were never issued at the time as two CDs of the tour were already available. A few years ago, Chris phoned me to say he had come across the recordings and thought they were better than the issued ones and he would like me to issue them so they were released as “Going To Town – In Carlisle ‘94” (LACD319).
The recordings were made for the Timeless label so I had no involvement with them once I had mixed and mastered the recordings. I did a number of recordings in Whitley Bay, Manchester, Harrogate, Birmingham, Stoke-on-Trent, Warrington and Croydon. Once the Keswick Jazz Festival was established and the new Theatre by the Lake was opened, Chris had an annual gig there. This was very convenient as it was only 20 miles from where I lived, the acoustics were good, it was always a capacity crowd, so several recordings were made there.
Three of the recordings I made have stories attached to them. One involving Acker Bilk as the guest resulted in two venues – Manchester and Harrogate. I always recorded on multi-track (16-track) digital. Without getting too technical it involved two 8-track machines linked together. In Manchester one of the machines kept losing the link so I decided to record the second night in Harrogate and everything worked perfectly. 16-track was good because each instrument could have its own microphone and the balance could be done back in the studio. I got to know Acker and one of my favourite tracks was recorded “South”. Not a particularly notable tune, but it was a feature for John, Ian and Acker. They were all playing clarinets, but each had a very distinctive sound. Fortunately, it had worked in both Manchester and Harrogate so I was able to include the unissued version on the box set “Just Once More For All Time – A History of Chris Barber’s Bands 1949-2008” (LACD364).
The Croydon one at Fairfield Hall was an odd one. When Chris asked me to do the recording, I pointed out how far it was from my home, 40 miles south of the Scottish Border down to Croydon, but he said it was a one-off gig with Van Morrison. So, with my son Richard as an assistant, I travelled south. Also on the gig was former band and skiffle group member, Dickie Bishop. There was a rehearsal in the afternoon and apart from the rhythm section, Richard Oliver, sound man Barry Walker and a couple of Fairfield staff there was no-one else in the building, but Van Morrison was chaperoned by three “minders” all the time. He only appeared when he was needed and was escorted to and from his dressing room by the minders. He never spoke or acknowledged me despite being together in the cramped wing space. One of the minders told me I could not record Van. Chris told me it had been cleared with Van’s management so I told them that. They totally ignored me from that point onwards. I got chatting to Dickie Bishop and we kept in touch for some time afterwards. Lonnie also showed up. Lonnie, Van and Chris had made a skiffle recording and Lonnie had come to have a photograph taken with the others for the CD booklet. I think Chris gave copies of Van’s contributions to his management. I don’t know if they were ever used. I met three people that evening, Harold Davidson, skiffle legend Chas McDevitt and Chris’s wife, Kate Barber.
The Stoke-On-Trent gig at Victoria Hall was significant because it was a trial run for the Big Chris Barber Band although no one knew it at the time. Bob Hunt, Mike Henry and Nick Payton were added to the line-up as guests, billed as Bob Hunt’s Ellingtonians. I had worked with them when I recorded Bob Hunt’s Duke Ellington Orchestra – one of my favourite LAKE albums. My son was at the University and living in Stoke so he came along to help. Although a drummer, he had started playing guitar so latched on to John Slaughter and chatted to him about guitars. I had always worn a jacket and tie when I went to record the band and I don’t know why because I was always back stage. I decided not to bother at Stoke, but I didn’t know that Victoria Hall had no wing space so resplendent in casual shirt and jeans I sat with the equipment on the side of the stage in full view of the audience.
On the early recordings I used my microphones. I am not sure if Chris got a sponsorship deal, but Chris got a better set of miccrophones and I just took what is known as a split-feed (one going to the P.A. and one going to the recording) and this made setting up a lot easier. I could not have done the recordings without an assistant because one thing I learnt from the start – and the bigger the band got the more this happened – the musicians can move to different miccrophones, so one person had to monitor the recordings and the other had to note the movements. The most movement occurred in “C-Jam Blues”. When I mixed that tune I had to mix each section separately to get the balance right and then edit all the bits together – a lot easier with digital and a computer than it would have been with analogue tape and a razor blade. At the sound check Chris was always very good and made sure I had got done everything I needed to do before he called an end to the sound check. One thing I was never happy about was the sound of Vic’s bass. He had a nice instrument, but because he moved about for some tunes a microphone was never used. Instead, he used a pick-up and it tended to sound like an electric bass no matter what I did with it.
Alongside the ‘live’ recordings other things were happening. I had gone into the recording business full time from 1996. Neither label could give us a living on their own, but combined, and me able to do more work, it became viable. I was keeping in touch with Chris. We had a good working relationship and became very friendly. Other people I worked with had inflated ideas about their worth, but Chris knew exactly what his name was worth and any deals struck were realistic and beneficial to both of us. Because the band played fairly complicated arrangements, played without music on stage, the repertoire only changed slowly so Chris liked to have a range of CDs to sell at gigs. He had a number of tapes from various stages of the band, which he would like to have issued so I started to do those. I also had the idea of the “Year” series.
As a general principle I was never very interested in doing compilations – I wanted to try to do complete albums. CDs, though, had a long-playing time (up to 79 minutes) and some LPs were barely 40 minutes. As a result, I looked at the possibility of grouping all the recordings made in one year. The conclusion I came to was that they would have to be double CDs. Double CDs at full price did not sell well, but I realised that the difference in manufacturing costs of a single and a double CD was less than 75p so I hit on the idea of a double for the price of one. It reduced the profit margin compared to other singles, but, with luck, we would sell more. My gamble paid off. Also, recordings up to 1963 went out of copyright 50 years after they were issued, so on a lot of Chris’s back catalogue I had no royalties to pay to major companies. Copyright on the tunes (to composers/publishers) is calculated on the price so the double might have twice as many tunes on it, but the royalties are the same as a single.
I accumulated little bits of knowledge along the way. Listen to the earliest recordings of “Bourbon Street Parade” (about 1956). Chris and Pat pronounce it “Bore-bon” (as in the biscuit or as a French speaker) which they later modify to the American/New Orleans pronunciation “Burr-bon”. Although the band seemed to have played “Bourbon Street Parade” forever, it was replaced by “I Never Shall Forget” as the opening tune for a short while in the mid-60s. I acquired the tapes recorded in the 50s/60s at Manchester Free Trade Hall featuring Sonny Terry & Brownie McGhee, Sister Rosetta Tharpe and Sonny Boy Williamson. Some of the tracks appeared on a series of Blues CDs and Chris apologised for not crediting me for supplying them.
Sonny Morris (of the Crane River Jazz Band) gave me some acetate discs, one of which included the 1953 Ken Colyer Band. One of the tunes, “Chimes Blues”, had never been recorded by the band commercially and this was the only known version. Unfortunately, the track was damaged. Acetates are direct cut soft plastic on an aluminum base and damage easily. However, because the tune repeats itself, I was able to rebuild it into a useable track. I gave a copy to Chris who used it on a Timeless CD and I also used it. So did a company issuing a cheap compilation of Ken Colyer recordings. I took issue with them. Despite it being recorded in 1953 the copyright starts from when it is issued so the copyright was mine. It wasn’t worth taking legal action. If you re-equalise and remaster out of copyright recordings as I do, you create a new copyright date from when it is issued. I have had a number of “discussions” with people who have “borrowed” tracks off my CDs for YouTube and who do not understand copyright law – despite each CD stating it cannot be used without permission – written round the edge of the CD. The most vociferous “discussion” I had was with a man who forcefully told me Ottilie had recorded “The Old Rugged Cross”. She never did, I even checked with Chris.
To celebrate his 80th birthday Chris did a series of concerts and he invited me and my wife Linda to one in Liverpool. Backstage I met Georgio Gomelsky. Georgio owned Marmalade Records and had issued some non-jazz recordings by Ottilie (very rare, very collectable!) and Chris’s “Battersea Rain Dance” LP. Georgio had done some sort of deal with Polydor, but, something which I didn’t fully understand, had gone wrong and the label was in a sort of legal limbo. Polydor, as you might have guessed, was now owned by Universal (Universal certainly lives up to its name). Because of my deal with Universal I hatched a plan with Georgio to try to license the LP for re-issue. Universal declined the application giving no reason. It is a significant album as the recordings were done over a period of time and across Ian Wheeler leaving the band for the first time and John Crocker joining. It also is the start of Chris getting a bit more experimental.
I must acknowledge the superb support, encouragement, and input I received from Julian Purser and Jem Wilyman. Julian was Chris’s archivist, a discographer, and Jem was a dedicated fan whose opinion I valued. I should also mention Gerald Bielderman who does a great job in publishing discographies. I am sometimes asked which are LAKE’s best-selling albums. The answer is simple and they all involve Chris: “The Complete Decca Sessions” (LACD142), “That Patterson Girl” (LACD244) and “New Orleans to London” (LACD209) by Ken Colyer’s 1953 Band – Chris said he thought my remastering made it sound better than the original.
Turning my hobby into my full-time job was one of the best things I have ever done. In many ways my earlier enthusiasm for Chris’s band was vindicated. Looking back on it, I was in the right place at the right time and was fortunate to be able to make so much good music available. British Traditional Jazz is often derided, but a lot of excellent recordings were made. The bottom has dropped out of the market and I would not contemplate doing it now. In 2018 we decided to wind the company down. Instead of keeping items in the catalogue, as they sold out, they were deleted. I wanted to go out on a high, so I did the box set. Despite declining sales, I wanted to do it as a tribute to Chris and the pleasure his music and association has given me. There is much more information in the booklet to the set. My own favourite albums? Probably the box set, but I also like the “Remembering….” Series of Monty Sunhine, Pat Halcox and Ian Wheeler. I have a lot more unissued stuff, but generally the best has been issued. I wish I could have issued some more of the Black Lion LPs, but DA Music in Germany, who own the label now, were very difficult to deal with despite Chris trying to sort it out for me when he was in Germany.
I realised something was the matter with Chris when he phoned me three times in one week and we had the same conversation. I was going to point that out to him, but I didn’t because I realised there was a problem. I had a phone conversation with Kate and she told me Chris had dementia. He continued working – he didn’t know how to stop! – as, despite his memory going, he still played and sung well. For a man with a superb memory, it was particularly cruel. His enthusiasm for the music never diminished. To me he was kind, thoughtful and encouraging. He was a showman, and stage presentation was important to him, but at the core of it was the quality of the music and the musicians he surrounded himself with. His recordings are his legacy.
PAUL ADAMS, LAKE RECORDS, 2023