Bill Barber: RIP

[stevebop]

June 29, 2007
Bill Barber, Who Brought the Tuba to Famed Jazz Sessions, Is Dead at 87
By PETER KEEPNEWS

Bill Barber, one of the first musicians to play modern jazz on the tuba, died on June 18 in Bronxville, N.Y. He was 87.

The cause was heart failure, said his daughter, Jill Barber Segarra.

Mr. Barber performed or recorded with Miles Davis, John Coltrane, Stan Getz and other leading modernists in the course of a jazz career that began in 1947, when he joined the pianist Claude Thornhill’s influential and adventurous big band.

John William Barber was born on May 21, 1920, in Hornell, N.Y., near Rochester. He began playing tuba in high school and later studied at the Juilliard School and performed with an Army band.

After his discharge from the Army in 1945, he settled in Kansas City, Mo., where he played with the Kansas City Philharmonic. A few years later he moved to New York, where he joined the Thornhill band and, in 1949 and 1950, participated in a series of historic recordings led by Miles Davis.

Those sessions, featuring a nine-piece band that played intricate, understated arrangements by, among others, Gil Evans, who had also written for Thornhill, came to be seen as a precursor to the cool jazz movement of the 1950s. They were later reissued on LP as “Birth of the Cool.” Mr. Barber’s association with Davis and Evans continued when the two teamed up again in the late 1950s for the acclaimed big-band albums “Miles Ahead,” “Sketches of Spain” and “Porgy and Bess.” He can be heard on those and other noteworthy recordings, including Coltrane’s only big-band album, “Africa/Brass.”

But despite those credits, Mr. Barber found playing jazz on the tuba a difficult way to make a living. He later received a master’s degree from the Manhattan School of Music and became a high school music teacher in Copiague, N.Y. He continued to perform, most prominently with the Goldman Band, and in 1992 he recorded and toured with a nonet led by Gerry Mulligan that revisited the “Birth of the Cool” repertory.

In addition to his daughter, of Bronxville, he is survived by his wife, Dora; two sons, John, of Covington, R.I., and William, of Manhattan; nine grandchildren; and four great-grandchildren.

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/06/29/ar...u1zz0Q9/jMKsOw

[Lois Gilbert]

Jazz Tuba Player Bill Barber; Pioneered Interpretive Styles

By Adam Bernstein
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, June 30, 2007; B06



Bill Barber, 87, a musician who helped refashion the jazz tuba from its predictable oompah passages to suit the complex melodies and rhythms of Miles Davis and other postwar jazz modernists, died June 18 at his home in Bronxville, N.Y. He had congestive heart failure.

A fixture of many early jazz bands, the tuba was largely reduced to a jazz relic by the early 1930s as sound technology improved. The upright bass took the place of the booming brass instrument.

Yet a core of post-World War II arrangers -- notably Gil Evans -- admired the tuba's tone color possibilities. They advocated its use in small jazz groups more as a melodic instrument than for any rhythmic pace keeping.

The New Grove Dictionary of Jazz credits Mr. Barber, who took a central role in Evans's experiments in sound with trumpeter Davis, as probably the first tuba player "to take solos in a modern jazz style and to participate in intricate ensemble passages."

Harvey Phillips, an emeritus music professor at Indiana University and a leading tuba player since the 1950s, wrote this year in the journal of the International Tuba Euphonium Association that Mr. Barber "is a legend to me and many others for having pioneering the interpretive styles and phrasing of the tuba in modern American jazz and for helping define the variety of roles the tuba can play in other music disciplines."

John William Barber was born May 21, 1920, in Hornell, N.Y., in the Finger Lakes region.

His music career began when his grade-school band needed a tuba player. "The bandmaster said it would make me big and strong, but that hasn't happened yet," the wiry Mr. Barber told the British publication Jazz Journal International in 1993.

After attending the prestigious Interlochen music camp in Michigan, he entered New York's Juilliard School of music but left in 1942 with a dozen musician friends to join the Army during World War II.

When speaking of his experiences in Gen. George S. Patton Jr.'s Seventh Army band in Europe, he liked saying, "I never killed anyone with my tuba."

After the war, he performed with the Kansas City Philharmonic Orchestra and other symphonic groups. Dismissing his orchestral pay as "crab apples and ice water," Mr. Barber won a coveted spot in 1947 playing with the cliche-busting big band of Claude Thornhill.

The Thornhill group was a novelty -- a traditional swing band with two French horns and a tuba that gave it an ethereal and romantic sound. Although not a huge commercial success, the orchestra had a terrific reputation among musicians and critics.

Evans was an arranger for the band and worked with Davis to reproduce the Thornhill sound with a minimum of instrumentation. Out of this collaboration came the dozen recordings with Davis's nonet, or nine-piece band, that made up the 1949 "Birth of the Cool" release and is often regarded as a high mark in the era's musical creativity.

Mr. Barber was featured on "Birth of the Cool" and later Davis albums, including "Blue Miles," "Miles Ahead," "Porgy and Bess" and "Sketches of Spain." He stood out on the 1957 Leonard Feather and Dick Hyman release "The Hi-Fi Suite" for his solo on "Woofer" and also played on recordings led by saxophonists Gigi Gryce, John Coltrane and Gerry Mulligan (another Thornhill veteran).

Mr. Barber played with arranger Pete Rugolo's band and the experimental Eddie Sauter-Bill Finegan outfit in the early 1950s while holding down a three-year nighttime job playing in the pit band of the Broadway show "The King and I."

By the early 1960s, Mr. Barber settled into a full-time career as a high school music teacher on Long Island. He continued to perform, often with the now-defunct Goldman Band, a historic concert group, as well as regional symphony orchestras.

In 1992, he participated in Mulligan's Carnegie Hall concert called "Rebirth of the Cool," which paid homage to the original "Birth of the Cool" release. The group toured internationally and issued an album.

About that time, he told Jazz Journal International about his varied career: "I did all sorts of jobs and strolled the tables in German and Italian restaurants playing the tuba. Lots of musicians do these sort of jobs, and when you work with someone you know, it's a case of 'I won't tell anyone you were here, if you don't tell anyone I was here.' "

Survivors include his wife of 60 years, Dora Aloi Barber of Bronxville; three children, John K. Barber of Coventry, R.I., William J. Barber of Manhattan, N.Y., and Jill Segarra of Bronxville; nine grandchildren; and four great-grandchildren

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn...902411_pf.html

[clinthopson]

I loved the sound that Barber brought to the Thornhill, Mulligan, Evans bands.