Jon Lord with The Hoochie Coochie Men

Jon Lord was best known as the co-founder and keyboard player for Deep Purple, but he had a lengthy career with other bands (and as a session musician) long before that band first recorded in 1968, and had an extensive solo career as well, in addition to playing with such offshoot groups as Whitesnake and Paice, Ashton & Lord. He was born Jon Douglas Lord in Leicester, England, in 1941, and manifested an interest in music very early on, taking up classical piano at age five -- his boyhood influences ranged from pre-Baroque through Johann Sebastian Bach to Late Romantics such a...