Born Richard Starkey, Ringo got the first half of his nickname while playing in bands with Eddie Clayton and Rory Storm. They called him Ringo because he wore multiple rings on both of his hands.
As for the second half of his name, Starr seems to be just a slight shortening of Starkey. However, the first bands he played with in Liverpool made the name part of the attraction. Ringo wasn’t quite as shy about drum solos before he joined an up-and-coming band called the Beatles. When working with his first Liverpool acts, they called his time soloing behind the kit “Starr Time,” thus making the second half of his stage name stick.
Richard Starkey was born on 7 July 1940 at 9 Madryn Street in Dingle, an inner-city area of Liverpool. He is the only child of confectioners Richard Starke and Elsie Gleave (Elsie enjoyed singing and dancing, a hobby that she shared with her husband, an avid fan of swing. Prior to the birth of their son, whom they nicknamed “Ritchie”, the couple had spent much of their free time on the local ballroom circuit, but their regular outings ended soon after his birth. Elsie adopted an overprotective approach to raising her son that bordered on fixation. Subsequently, “Big Ritchie”, as Starkey’s father became known, lost interest in his family, choosing instead to spend long hours drinking and dancing in pubs, sometimes for several consecutive days.
Starr was afflicted by life-threatening illnesses during childhood, with periods of prolonged hospitalisation. He briefly held a position with British Rail before securing an apprenticeship as a machinist at a Liverpool equipment manufacturer. Soon afterwards, he became interested in the UK skiffle craze and developed a fervent admiration for the genre. In 1957, he co-founded his first band, the Eddie Clayton Skiffle Group, which earned several prestigious local bookings before the fad succumbed to American rock and roll around early 1958.
When the Beatles formed in 1960, Starr was a member of another Liverpool group, Rory Storm and the Hurricanes. After achieving moderate success in the UK and Hamburg, he quit the Hurricanes when he was asked to join the Beatles in August 1962, replacing Pete Best.
The rest is history.
Well of course for the fact of his other globally successful career, which so very few people are unaware of. In the UK from 1984 to 1986 and in the US from 1989 to 1990.Ringo Starr was the narrator of the popular kids TV show “Thomas & Friends”.
But he will of course forever be associated with the Beatles.
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History of Sorts 
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