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): Collin McKinney • Frank McDonough • Gilles Lamontagne • Harry Reasoner • John Robertson (Glasgow MP) • Maynard James Keenan • Phil Henderson (basketball) • Sherrie Levine • Thornton Wilder • Tyron Woodley • Win Maung

Born in the same month (April 1930): Bradford Dillman • Carolyn Jones • Claude Bolling • Dolores Huerta • Hilda Hilst • Jack Taylor (referee) • Jerome Callet • John Landy • Mary Costa • Peter Schulz • Pythagoras Papastamatiou • René Desmaison • Roddy Maude-Roxby • Roger Vergé • Spede Pasanen • Walter Krüger (athlete)