- Date Of Birth: 7 April 1930
- Date Of Death: 2 March 2021
- Occupation: Musician, songwriter and bandleader
- City: Hertfordshire
- State: England
Donald Christopher Barber OBE (17 April 1930 – 2 March 2021) was an English jazz musician, best known as a bandleader and trombonist. As well as scoring a UK top twenty trad jazz hit with “Petite Fleur” in 1959, he helped the careers of many musicians. These 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.
Barber was married four times. His second marriage, to Ottilie Patterson, lasted from 1959 until their divorce in 1983. He subsequently had two children during his third marriage.
Barber died on 2 March 2021. He was 90 and had suffered from dementia. – Available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License from Wikipedia.
