Opher’s World – Tributes to Rock Genius – Chris Barber

If you like Rock Music, in the widest sense, you’ll find my book of tributes quite interesting. This is my bit on Chris Barber.

Chris Barber

Chris Barber is the unsung Grandfather of British Blues and Rock. He is still regarded as a Trad Jazz performer, and did stay true to that style of music throughout, but he was so much more important than that. Single-handedly he did three incredible things that transformed the music scene in Britain.

Firstly he encouraged and facilitated the introduction of a scaled-down unit in his act that focussed on simple versions of American Folk-Blues. The sub-group was led by Lonnie Donnegan and they went from having a short set in the interval at the middle of Chris Barber’s act to becoming an over-night sensation and starting the whole Skiffle Boom of the fifties. The Beatles and every other Beat group in the country started off in a band because of that. Just think if Chris had not given them a place in the performance and had not gone on to record them in one of his sessions all that might not have happened. Without ‘Rock Island Line’ there might not have been any Beatles.

Secondly he provided a platform for Black American Blues artists to visit, play and record. By doing that he exposed future British musicians to the real thing and got a sizeable group of the British public interested in Blues so that the British bands had an audience when they got going. The Blues guys were bemused by the enthusiastic responses they got from White British audiences. They did not receive that reception in their native America.

Thirdly he brought Alexis Korner and Cyril Davies back together to work on a Blues album he was recording in 1961. Out of that came Blues Incorporated, the first, seminal R&B band in Britain.

I reckon those three things are sufficient to give him legendary status in anybody’s book. In my eyes he was responsible for the Beatles, Stones and the whole British Rock Scene. Without Chris Barber we’d still be on a par musically with Sweden and I can’t stand Abba.