[5] Lord absorbed the blues sounds that played a key part in his rock career, principally the raw sounds of the great American jazz and blues organists, such as Wild Bill Davis, Jimmy Smith, Jimmy McGriff and "Brother" Jack McDuff ("Rock Candy"), as well as the stage showmanship of Jerry Lee Lewis and performers like Buddy Holly, whom he saw perform at the De Montfort Hall in Leicester in March 1958.

Lord also stated that he was heavily influenced by the organ-based progressive rock played by Vanilla Fudge after seeing that band perform in Great Britain in 1967, and earlier by the personal direction he received from British organ pioneer Graham Bond.

Small acting parts followed, including in the British TV series, Emergency - Ward 10, and Lord continued playing the piano and the organ in nightclubs and as a session musician to earn a living.

It also performed abroad, and it appeared on the first Ready Steady Goes Live, promoting its first single the Lead Belly song "Sweet Mary" — but significant commercial success eluded it.

Lord next founded the blues-influenced Santa Barbara Machine Head, featuring Art's brother, Ronnie Wood, writing and recording three powerful keyboard-driven instrumental tracks, giving a preview of the future style of Deep Purple.

[citation needed] In early 1967, through his roommate Chris Curtis of the Searchers, Lord met businessman Tony Edwards who was looking to invest in the music business alongside partners Ron Hire and John Coletta (HEC Enterprises).

Ignoring the emergence of the Moog synthesizer, as pioneered in rock by such players as Keith Emerson, Lord began experimenting with a keyboard sound produced by driving the Hammond organ through Marshall amplifiers in an effort to match the attack and volume of Blackmore's guitar.

Performed live at the Royal Albert Hall on 24 September 1969 (with new band members Ian Gillan and Roger Glover, Evans and Simper having been fired), it was recorded by the BBC and later released as an album in December 1969.

Lord rarely ventured into the synthesizer territory on Purple albums, often limiting his experimentation to the use of the ring modulator with the Hammond, to give live performances on tracks like Space Truckin' a distinctive 'spacey' sound.

The BBC, buoyed by the success of the Concerto, commissioned him to write another piece and the resulting "Gemini Suite" was performed by Deep Purple and the Light Music Society under Malcolm Arnold at the Royal Festival Hall in September 1970, and then in Munich with the Kammerorchester conducted by Eberhard Schoener in January 1972.

It then became the basis for Lord's first solo album, Gemini Suite, released in November 1972, with vocals by Yvonne Elliman and Tony Ashton and with the London Symphony Orchestra backing a band that included Albert Lee on guitar.

He created an informal group of friends and collaborators including Ashton, Paice, Bernie Marsden, Boz Burrell and later, Bad Company's Mick Ralphs, Simon Kirke and others.

The composer and musician (The Orchestral Tubular Bells (1975), Star's End (1974), The Rime Of The Ancient Mariner (1975)), performed a live concert of a musical version of Homer's play, at the Royal Albert Hall on 25 January 1977.

Lord's job in Whitesnake was largely limited to adding colour (or, in his own words, a 'halo') to round out a blues-rock sound that already accommodated two lead guitarists, Bernie Marsden and Micky Moody.

He added a Yamaha CP-70 electric piano to his set-up and finally a huge bank of synthesizers onstage courtesy of Moog (Minimoog, Opus, Polymoog) so he could play the 12-bar blues the band often required and recreate string section and other effects.

He later expressed frustration that he was a poorly paid hired-hand, but fans saw little of this discord and Whitesnake's commercial success kept him at the forefront of readers' polls as heavy rock's foremost keyboard maestro.

His dissatisfaction (and Coverdale's eagerness to revamp the band's line-up and lower the average age to help crack the US market) smoothed the way for the reformation of Deep Purple Mk II in 1984.

He was asked to guest on albums by friends George Harrison (Gone Troppo from 1982) and Pink Floyd's David Gilmour (1984's About Face), Cozy Powell (Octopuss in 1983) and to play on an adaptation of Kenneth Grahame's 1908 classic, The Wind in the Willows.

In the 1980s he was also a member of an all-star band called Olympic Rock & Blues Circus fronted by Pete York and featuring a rotating line-up of Miller Anderson, Tony Ashton, Brian Auger, Zoot Money, Colin Hodgkinson, Chris Farlowe and many others.

Lord's re-emergence with Deep Purple in 1984 resulted in huge audiences for the reformed Mk II line-up, including 1985's second largest grossing tour in the US and an appearance in front of 80,000 rain-soaked fans headlining Knebworth on 22 June 1985, all to support the Perfect Strangers album.

Lord finally retired from Deep Purple amicably after their UK tour in February 2002, preceded by a knee injury that eventually resolved itself without surgery and which brought keyboardist Don Airey into the band, initially as his temporary replacement.

In 2003 he also returned to his beloved R&B and blues heritage to record an album of standards in Sydney, with Australia's Jimmy Barnes, entitled Live in the Basement, by Jon Lord and the Hoochie Coochie Men.

[20] Titled after the main work—a six movement suite for solo flute, piano and string orchestra—the album was inspired by, and was dedicated to the memory of Sir John Mortimer, who died in January 2009.

In July 2011, Lord performed his final live concert appearance, the Sunflower Jam at the Royal Albert Hall, where he premiered his joint composition, "It's not as big as it was", with Rick Wakeman.

Lars Ulrich, founding member and drummer in Metallica commented, "Ever since my father took me to see them in 1973 in Copenhagen, at the impressionable age of 9, Deep Purple has been the most constant, continuous and inspiring musical presence in my life.

We can all be guilty of lightly throwing adjectives like 'unique,' 'one-of-a-kind' and 'pioneering' around when we want to describe our heroes and the people who've moved us, but there are no more fitting words than those right now and there simply was no musician like Jon Lord in the history of hard rock.

Performers and presenters included Deep Purple, Bob Harris, Paul Weller, Bruce Dickinson, Alfie Boe, Jeremy Irons, Rick Wakeman, Joe Brown, Glenn Hughes, Kasia Laska, Miller Anderson and Steve Balsamo.

[41] In December 2012 the Mayor of Leicester, Sir Peter Soulsby, joined the campaign to honour Lord with a blue plaque at his childhood home at 120 Averill Road, where he lived until he was 20 years old, saying it would be "an important reminder of the city's contribution to the world of contemporary music.

Most recently in March and April 2023, a European and Brazilian tour took place across 11 dates in cities including Bucharest, Sofia, Zagreb and Sao Paolo featuring Bruce Dickinson performing the vocal parts.

Members of Orquestra Sinfônica do Estado de São Paulo featured alongside Kaitner Z Doka on guitar, Bernhard Welz on drums, John O'Hara (Jethro Tull) on keyboards, Tanya O'Callaghan (Whitesnake) on bass and Mario Argandoña on percussion.