Sounds of the kitchen sink trad jazz and British cinema's new wave
almost 5 years in The guardian
Chris Barber’s death is a reminder of trad’s key place n the explosion of a film style that moved to the music of the era
In the opening scene of the 1959 film of Look Back in Anger, Richard Burton, as “angry” icon Jimmy Porter, establishes his nonconformist credentials by indulging in a sweaty jazz-trumpet freakout as the local youth bop in a frenzy nearby. The scene is an invention of the film-makers – the original play takes place entirely inside a single cramped attic flat – but the took its cue from play-Porter’s fondness for playing a trumpet offstage, to wind everybody up.
Well, it was a smart move by the film-makers – director Tony Richardson and writer Nigel Kneale – to ally their pioneering essay in the film kitchen-sink realism with trad jazz, then at the height of its popularity in the UK. The death this week of Chris Barber is a reminder that the band we briefly see in Look Back in Anger (the film) is Barber’s Jazz Band, who had had a massive chart hit with Petite Fleur earlier in the same year. That’s Barber himself honking his ’bone next to Burton, and the band’s actual trumpet player Pat Halcox shaking Burton’s hand when he gets down from the stage. Continue reading...
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