In 1953 Chris Barber helped form Ken Colyer’s Jazzmen along with clarinetist Monty Sunshine, playing Dixieland jazz and later ragtime, swing, blues and R&B. The group also included Lonnie Donegan. When Ken Colyer left the following year the group became The Chris Barber Band that spearheaded the Anglo-European trad jazz movement during the late '50s and early '60s.

Barber has since devoted 60 years to the endless celebration of old-fashioned music. But that's only part of his story. Even as he presided over that transatlantic response to the Dixieland revival, Barber went out of his way to make music with US blues legends Big Bill Broonzy, Brother John Sellers, Sonny Terry, Brownie McGhee, Otis Spann, Muddy Waters, James Cotton, and Sonny Boy Williamson II.

This cross-pollination dramatically affected the lives and careers of budding British rockers such as the Rolling Stones, the Yardbirds, Eric Burdon, Jimmy Page, and John Mayall.

More recently the 1990s and the first decade of the 21st century found Barber carrying the torch of trad jazz into a sixth decade of creative professional activity, expanding his group to include 11 players known as The Big Chris Barber Band, delivering music of unpretentious warmth and historic depth.