Lorraine Bowen | Barbara Moore interview

Lorraine Bowen interviews the legendary Barbara Moore - British composer and arranger in March 2012 aged nearly 80.

Lorraine had a personal mission to find and celebrate Barbara's achievements and to make a radio show about her work. She started recording Barbara on audio and then realised this was a fabulous chance to capture the moment on video. A quick whip out with the camcorder and the rest is herstory!

Barbara Moore's work is often overlooked and uncredited being a woman session musician working in the1960s. Barbara worked with Dudley Moore (who became a great personal friend), sang with the Ladybirds vocal group every Wednesday on Top of the Pops including Jimi Hendrix's 'Hey Joe' and Sandi Shaw's 'Puppet on a String'. She also sang 'The Saint' and 'Bedazzled' theme tunes and many more that she does not remember! She used to record three vocal sessions a day!

Barbara was not only a singing but a talented composer and arranger.
She is the woman who put together that fabulous brass arrangement for Alan Freeman's Pick of the Pops. Rhythmic feisty brass writing that continues to sound fresh and original today.

Barbara Moore went on to write many albums of fabulous original pieces for De Wolfe Library Music, adverts over Europe, scoring the vocal ensemble for Elton John's 'The Border Song' and many more illustrious projects.

So Lorraine was extremely happy to find Barbara in West Sussex after many years of searching.
On a dull afternoon she got into the 50th page of Google and found a tiny mention of a colleague's phone number, rang it and two days later Barbara returned the call when Lorraine was eating lunch in a restaurant. She sped home and organised an interview and lo and behold Barbara was living only one hour away by train in Bognor Regis! It's a great story. Luckily Lorraine had also had good sense to bring a camcorder even though the interview was meant to be audio only.

Hope you enjoy the interview! Lorraine has many other videos of interviews with Barbara Moore as after this initial interview, they met several times and created a show called 'Lorraine Bowen meets Barbara Moore' in venues in Brighton and London. Lorraine wanted to share Barbara's stories with friends and fans of the swinging sixties. The show format became that of a live interview on stage with piano sections from Barbara and audio clips with spoken memories. Barbara wooed the audience with great tales of show business from the decades. She's a great raconteur and really gives us the taste of the 60s.

Barbara mentions Deena webster at the beginning of this video. Well since the video took to the airwaves, Deena has been in touch and the two are paired up which has really delighted Barbara!

Since this interview many people have been in touch with Barbara, she has a lovely small film made about her from Solent BBC Radio and do check out Google for lots of mentions!
You won't have to delve into fifty pages anymore!

UPDATE: Barbara Moore passed away on August 26th 2021

www. barbaramoore .co. uk

VIDEO COPYRIGHT - Lorraine Bowen
www.lorrainebowen.co.uk