Introduction

Biography

Brother of a Bap­tist min­is­ter, Bark­er emi­grat­ed from Eng­land to Ca­na­da in the 1940’s, where he earned a doc­tor­ate in mu­sic from the Roy­al Con­ser­va­to­ry of Mu­sic of To­ro­nto.

During World War II, he di­rect­ed the Ge­ne­ral Mo­tors Cho­rus. He al­so owned stock in the Ham­mond or­gan com­pa­ny and scrounged Ham­mond tone ca­bi­nets from lo­cal Ham­mond deal­er­ships, and placed them in the De­troit Ti­gers base­ball sta­di­um.

About the same time, his name and bio­gra­phy ap­peared in Who’s Who in the Mid­west.

He even­tu­al­ly be­came an Am­er­ican ci­ti­zen, and taught pi­ano at the De­troit In­sti­tute of Mu­sic­al Arts

He was ac­tive in di­rect­ing choirs (in­clud­ing one of ov­er 300 mem­bers at Cen­tral Me­tho­dist Church in Lan­sing, Mi­chi­gan), and had a broad­cast of organ class­ics on WKAR ra­dio out of Mi­chi­gan State Uni­ver­si­ty.