Rock & Roll Birthdays

injinji

Well-Known Member
1938 Jet Black, English drummer, one of the founding members of The Stranglers

Before forming the band, "Jet Black" (real name Brian Duffy) was in his mid-30s. A successful businessman, Black at one point owned a fleet of ice cream vans,[4] and later ran "The Jackpot",[5] a Guildford off-licence that would serve as the base for the early Stranglers.[6][7] Black had also been a semi-professional drummer in the late 1950s and early 1960s; after attaining a degree of financial stability due to his business successes, by 1974 he decided to return to drumming, and to assemble a band. The Stranglers came to be an influential band in the British punk and new wave scene of the mid-70s.
The group that eventually formed between 1974–75 was originally named the Guildford Stranglers, but they soon dropped the geographical prefix and the name, The Stranglers, was registered as a business on 11 September 1974 by Black[note 1][8]. The other original personnel were bass player/vocalist Jean-Jacques Burnel, guitarist/vocalist Hugh Cornwell and keyboardist/guitarist Hans Wärmling, who was replaced by keyboardist Dave Greenfield within a year.[note 2] None of the band came from Guildford (apart from Burnel who was from Godalming) : Black is from Ilford, Burnel from Notting Hill, Cornwell from Kentish Town and Greenfield from Brighton, while Wärmling came from Gothenburg and returned there after leaving the band.

 

injinji

Well-Known Member
1949 Leon Redbone [Dickran Gobalian], American blues and jazz musician (Seduced, Theme to Mr. Belvedere), born in Nicosia, Cyprus (d. 2019)



 

Amos Otis

Well-Known Member
1953 Rick Downey, American rock drummer and vocalist (Blue Oyster Cult, 1981-85)

My good friend for a few years, he was the lighting technician on tours, and an emergency replacement when original drummer Albert Bouchard was fired while touring Europe in '81. A great drummer and extremely cool cat, but BOC records became merely above average w/o Albert.

 
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