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): Andrea Gritti • Brad Boyes • Börje Salming • Claire Sweeney • Ernest Starling • George Davis (art director) • Jan Hammer • Liz Phair • Louis Jean Heydt • Marija Šestak • Michael IX Palaiologos • Phil Henderson (basketball) • René Moawad • Robert Dean Frisbie • Romain Grosjean • Samuel Chase • Sean Bean • Sherrie Levine • Stanislav Chistov • Travis Roy • Tsutomu Wakamatsu • Yuichi Nishimura

Born in the same month (April 1930): Andrew Sachs • Doug Beasy • F. Albert Cotton • Félix Guattari • Georges Descrières • John Landy • Manuel Neri • Mary Costa • Paul Mazursky • Peter Schulz • Silvana Mangano