Goodbye Jon Lord. Thank for the decades of great music & excellent keyboard mastery. Here is his solo from Katowice (Poland) 1996 from Purpendicular tour.
Day: July 17, 2012
Add Water To The Powder
This has been changed a little bit to Indianize it:
Ramu had lived all his life in a tiny little village in an isolated part of India. Due to work options being highly limited his parents approached a distant relative who live in New Delhi and he agreed to get Ramu a job in a big company there. So his parents packed him off to the city and Ramu settled into a lodge and started his job. Ramu had never seen anything beyond the village and was totally unprepared for the sights and sounds of the city. His eyes glazed away as he saw all that a big city had to offer. A month later he wrote his first letter to his parents. This is how it went:
Dear Pitashri (father) & matashri (mother),
Hope this letter find you in good health. I should have written to you sooner but I had lots of things to get sorted out here in New Delhi and only then could find time to write you a letter. I am doing fine here and I am enjoying my life in the big city. There is so much to see and so much to learn. But here is the best part of being in the city.
They have something called a “supermarket” over here, which you don’t find in our village. In this one big store you find all the items you can ever need or want. Honestly, you can spend a whole day in here going through all the items and buying things that you need for home. I went there yesterday and I saw so many wonderful things. Like in one section you have milk powder – you add water to the powder and you get milk! Just like that. No cows needed. Isn’t that wonderful?
Then in the next section I saw that they had orange juice powder. You add water to the orange powder and you get orange juice. Like magic. And not a single tree in sight! That was so amazing to see……but wait you haven’t heard the best part. I walked on again and reached another section and saw that they have…………
BABY POWDER! I am making my own family tonight and by tomorrow you will be grandparents!”
RIP Jon Lord
Jon Lord, former keyboard player with legends of rock music Deep Purple, has died aged 71. He had been receiving treatment for pancreatic cancer since last August and died at the London Clinic on Monday, surrounded by family. Lord was influenced by classical, blues and jazz but played his Hammond organ with a rock attitude and helped Deep Purple become pioneers of progressive and heavy rock.
Born in Leicester on 9 June 1941 to his parents Miriam and Reg, he studied classical piano from the age of five, and those influences are a recurring trademark in his work. Simultaneously, Lord absorbed the blues sounds that played a key part in his rock career, principally the raw sounds of the great American blues organists Jimmy Smith, Jimmy McGriff and “Brother” Jack McDuff (“Rock Candy”), as well as the stage showmanship of Jerry Lee Lewis. He could have chosen a career as an actor after receiving a drama school scholarship, but started playing in pub bands including short-lived outfits with future Rolling Stones star Ronnie Wood and his brother Art. He also worked as a session musician and is thought to have played piano on The Kinks’ hit You Really Got Me. After meeting guitarist Ritchie Blackmore through another project, the first incarnation of Deep Purple was born.
Lord continued to compose classical works alongside the group’s output and, when they split in 1976, he joined other groups Whitesnake and Paice, Ashton and Lord. Deep Purple reformed in 1984 and resumed at the height of their commercial prowess, playing to tens of thousands of fans around the world. They sold a total of 150 million albums and Lord remained an ever-present amid numerous line-up changes until he left in 2002. He had signed to a classical music label and performed a concert to mark the 30th anniversary of Concerto for Group and Orchestra. He broke the news of his cancer diagnosis on his website last year, telling fans he would continue to write music as part of his therapy.
Thank you Jon for all those great works of music. Your millions of fans will always remember your keyboard prowess.
