Sonny Terry Sonny s Story

This DVD celebrates Chris Barber's 50th anniversary as a professional musician. Recorded at Germany's Hot Jazz Festival 2002, he presents his eleven-piece Big Chris Barber Band.One of the leaders of England's early-'60s trad jazz movement, Chris Barber (a solid trombonist) began leading his own bands in 1948. In 1954, trumpeter Pat Halcox joined Barber, and with the later additions of clarinetist Monty Sunshine, banjoist/singer Lonnie Donegan, and blues singer Ottilie Patterson, Barber had an all-star crew. Sunshine's hit version of 'Petite Fleur' made both Barber and the clarinetist into big names. Although his group was based in Dixieland, Barber has long been open-minded towards ragtime, swing, mainstream, blues, R&B, and rock.

Josh White had a long and varied career, beginning as a session guitarist in the 1920s, then had his own run of stellar blues 78s for Paramount and Columbia in the 1930s, becoming a cabaret bluesman in New York in the 1940s, only to be blacklisted as the McCarthy era dawned, which led to his association with Jac Holzman's fledgling Elektra label in 1955. White recorded seven well-conceived LPs for Holzman between 1955 and 1962, and they restarted his career once again….

The ersatz blues story of the film gives Ry Cooder leeway to turn in an impressive blues-derived soundtrack featuring Sonny Terry along with his usual collaborators Van Dyke Parks, Jim Keltner, Nathan East, and others. But it's Cooder's guitar playing that highlights the album.