Ritchie Blackmore, one of rock's most influential and idiosyncratic guitarists, was born Richard Hugh Blackmore on 14 April 1945 in Weston-super-Mare, Somerset, England — so he is English by birth. His Welsh connection runs through his father, Lewis J. Blackmore, who multiple biographical sources record as having been born in Cardiff, making Ritchie the son of a Welshman even though he himself grew up in England, first in Weston-super-Mare and then, from the age of two, in Heston, Middlesex.
The Welsh line runs further back too: genealogical research into the Blackmore family places Ritchie's paternal grandfather, Silas Blackmore, as born in South Wales — recorded as Bedwellty, Monmouthshire in some sources — and his paternal grandmother, Eleanor Darby, as from Aberdare, Glamorganshire. Sources are not perfectly consistent on the exact Welsh town for the grandfather (Swansea is cited elsewhere), but they agree that Blackmore's father's side of the family was rooted in South Wales, and famouswelsh.com notes that minor inconsistency honestly rather than smoothing it over.
Blackmore's career needs no such caveats. As a founding member of Deep Purple he helped define hard rock guitar on tracks like "Smoke on the Water", before leaving in 1975 to form Rainbow, a vehicle for his fast, classically influenced style. He returned to Deep Purple in the 1980s and later reinvented himself entirely with Blackmore's Night, a Renaissance and folk-influenced project with his wife Candice Night, proving a restless creative streak that has spanned rock, metal and medieval folk music across six decades.