Chris Barber

Donald Christopher Barber was an English jazz musician, best known as a bandleader and trombonist. He helped many musicians with their careers and had a UK top twenty trad jazz hit with "Petite Fleur" in 1959. These musicians included the blues singer Ottilie Patterson, who was at one time his wife, and Lonnie Donegan, whose appearances with Barber triggered the skiffle craze of the mid-1950s and who had his first transatlantic hit, "Rock Island Line", while with Barber's band. He provided an audience for Donegan and, later, Alexis Korner, and sponsored African-American blues musicians to visit Britain, making Barber a significant figure in launching the British rhythm and blues and "beat boom" of the 1960s.

17 April 1930

Born on the same birth day (17 April): Alice Harden • Brett Maher (basketball) • Cynthia Ozick • Dheeran Chinnamalai • Don Kirshner • George Davis (art director) • Gerry McNeil • Hanna Pakarinen • Herms Niel • Hervé Bazin • Marquis Grissom • Martin Clemens • Michael IX Palaiologos • Muttiah Muralitharan • Pete Shelley • Richard Field (judge) • Ronald Hamowy • Solly Hemus

Born in the same month (April 1930): Andrew Sachs • Anton LaVey • Bradford Dillman • Clive Revill • Dieter Roth • Doug Beasy • F. Albert Cotton • Grace Lee Whitney • Hilda Hilst • Jim Fowler • José Sarney • Manuel Neri • Mario Benjamín Menéndez • Paul Mazursky • Pierre Lhomme • Pythagoras Papastamatiou • Silvana Mangano • Wallace McCain • Walter Krüger (athlete)