<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Strict//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-strict.dtd"> <html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml"> <head> <meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=UTF-8" /> </head> <body><div class="auto-created-dir-div" dir="auto" style="unicode-bidi: embed;"><style>p{margin:0}</style><p>Chris was a music academy alumnus before everything he became famous for. I was amused to see among historical photographs of Glasgow a poster bearing the name TOMMY TUCKER, who was some sort of singer on the margin of blues who had a minor uplift in reputation when his version of "Hi-Heel Sneakers" was issued on the British "Pye International" label, which issued singles and LPs from the Chicago Chess and Checker labels, with beside the big names of Howlin' Wolf and Muddy Waters, real bluesmen recommended to Chris by his friend John Lewis, of the MJQ. Chris had hitherto worked with the duo whose last years together might have seen them renamed Browned-off McGhee and Surly Terry (their latterday mutual antipathy was strikingly reported in a press review of an Edinburgh gig). <br></p><p><br></p><p>I remember the Tommy Tucker concert, which I attended with a friend who departed this life only a couple of weeks ago. He wasn't much impressed, nor were other people at the same concert, until after the interval, which we spent chatting to Pat Halcox in the pub across from the venue, when the Barber band with Sammy Rimington were joined by Alvin Alcorn. John Lewis would have been delighted to learn that his recommendation had the beneficial effect of getting Chris's band a more or less regular radio gig on a Saturday morning pop show, accompanying the bluesmen who came across as part of the exchange agreement in line with which subsequently much wealthier English rock performers went to the USA often enough with rip-offs or rips-off from the same bluesmen. Chris did as I recall claim to have pioneered the live performance of jazz in one or two of the allegedly identical townships of middle America, as a further aspect of the transatlantic swapping which established the friendship of Humphrey Lyttelton and Charlie Rouse, when Humph's ensemble was put on a tour as second act with the Thelonious Monk quartet. <br></p><p><br></p><p>John Slaughter and all, Chris did get a very good press for his support of the bluesmen on BBC Radio, with references to not "Drop Me off in Harlem" but the Barber band sounding like an ensemble collected from Harlem en route between Chicago and the Hundred Club / Langham Place. <br></p><p><br></p><p>Robert R. Calder <br></p></div></body></html>