Richard Starkey arrived in this world on July 7, 1940.  The only child of parents that loved swing music. They divorced when he was only 5, leaving his mother to raise the future Beatles drummer largely on her own, a challenge that was compounded by her young son having appendicitis when he was six and contracting tuberculosis two years later. His mother married  Harry Graves when Ringo was thirteen. Graves was a Big Band enthusiast and turned his step-son on to the stars of the genre.  He also helped arrange a job for him as an machine apprentice in an equipment factory. There, a co-worker introduced Ringo to Skiffle music. It would become a shared passion that was an instant thing in common he would have with John Lennon and Paul McCartney.