POSTER BOY

Chris Barber: trombonist, bassist, band-leader, pioneer of British jazz and blues -- and one of the great jazz musicians of the twentieth century. Chris has been leading a band for almost sixty years: 2008 marks the fifty-fourth anniversary of the formation of Chris Barber's Jazz Band, which later became the Chris Barber Jazz & Blues Band, and then, in 2001, the Big Chris Barber Band.
Chris, his band, and his music -- not to mention his devotion to jazz and the blues and his pioneering efforts to bring jazz and blues stars to Britain for the first time in the 1950s and 1960s -- have influenced, both directly and indirectly, almost everything that has happened on the music scene in the last half-century, including the Beatles, the Rolling Stones, Eric Clapton, and hundreds, possibly thousands of others, both amateur and professional.
Coming to Ilkleys Kings Hall this December, I didn't know a lot about him till last week when we put on a music evening for my oldies, nice sound and a must for any of you local Jazz fans!