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Artwoods: Live at Klooks Kleek
From the letters to our better-late-then-never desk, we are glad to present you an actually pretty decent quality recording of the two early Artwoods performances from 1964, featuring Jon Lord. It apparently came out a few years ago: in 2016 on vinyl, and in 2023 on CD and digital. The latter are available via Amazon, and, presumably, other outlets as well.
Amazon blurb reads:
Back in 1964 before they secured a recording contract, the Artwoods were making a name for themselves on the live UK R&B scene. One of the venues where they played was Dick Jordan and Geoff William’s Klooks Kleek in West London. The Artwoods cut their teeth as a support band and got such a positive response from the crowd that they were soon headlining their own nights. Like many R&B bands of the day, the Artwoods set comprised of standards like Smack Dab In The Middle, Big Boss Man, Kansas City, Shame Shame Shame, Detroit City and Green Onions. This 2-CD release features two different sets that the band played at that legendary venue in 1964 featuring a line-up of Art Wood (vocals/harmonica), Derek Griffiths (guitar), Jon Lord (keyboards), Malcolm Pool (bass) and Reg Dunnage (drums). The band are on fire and on most of the tracks cut loose instrumentally when Wood is not singing. As a special treat, Long John Baldry joins the band on the first set to lend his vocal prowess to Five Long Years and Got My Mojo Working. Licensed from Dick Jordan this is a must-have for fans of the Artwoods and classic British R&B. This 2-CD set comes with liner notes penned by Ian Shirley featuring an interview with former Artwood, Derek Griffiths.
Our regular Uwe Hornung adds:
This isn’t some hissy and murky audience recording (like some Artwoods live recordings released before), but actually a “professional” one (for the time!), distortion-free where all the instruments and the vocals can be heard well and Jon’s (back then still) Lowrey organ is prominent throughout. Interesting to hear how already in 1964, at 21 years of age, he was very rhythmic in his organ approach (though he solos a lot too).
Ab-so-fucking-lute-ly recommended!
Thanks to Uwe for the info.
Unauthorized copying, while sometimes necessary, is never as good as the real thing
Spasiba Nick!
Of the two different sets, the first one has slightly better quality, but side two picks up in quality as well after a somewhat shaky start. Both recordings were done with just a two-track reel-to-reel tape machine permanently installed at the venue, the live recordings thus created would then often be replayed by pirate radio stations that mushroomed in the UK at the time.
The Artwoods (back then still monikered as “The Art Wood Combo”) were the house band of that particular club – this was even before Decca signed them. But you wouldn’t know from the quality that this was a new band starting. Granted, there is always something a little “music scholarly” the way Art Wood and his men approached RnB standards: Art wasn’t Mick Jagger or Roger Daltrey in terms of frontman image or turning on a female audience, and Derek Griffiths, although solid, was no young Eric Clapton, Jeff Beck or, dare I say it, Ritchie. Nor are you going to hear the working class grit of later pub rock darlings and Punk godfathers Dr Feelgood performing a song like “I’m Talkin’ About You” (also in the Artwoods set)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=znBUehe2ygo
it’s all a little more well-behaved and jazzy-musicianly than that.
But a good man knows his limits and Derek is a sparse guitar player leaving plenty of room for Jon to shine – and shine he does throughout, a very groovy player.
Of the bands whose members would eventually culminate into the first two DP line ups such as The Maze, Johnny Kidd & The Pirates, Episode Six and The Outlaws/Lord Sutch, The Artwoods were certainly the “most serious, least novelty” outfit. Perhaps a bit too serious, their lack of showmanship (alongside the fact that no real songwriter emerged among the band members) ultimately led to their demise a few years later.
January 22nd, 2026 at 01:33Ab-so-fucking-lute-ly gotta to buy this one.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qTcCrBVISxY
January 22nd, 2026 at 03:06Greeeat stuff! Thanks!
January 22nd, 2026 at 08:14Listened to this during my morning workout!! Big smile throughout!! It was the sound of Jon’s Organ on the album Purple Passages that got me hooked on DP and made them my favorite band!! This is awesometastic, fanterrific, make up a word, pick a word, this is a must have. My copy will be here in 2 weeks!!!
January 22nd, 2026 at 11:45Now that sounds promising. Fun fact: Had some Artwoods playing in the car this morning… just take a break now – and read this news about a live set of the band.
January 22nd, 2026 at 12:28Off to collect it….
My uncle had the original vinyl back in the day and i always loved it. I see a lot of early Deep Purple influence on it.
January 22nd, 2026 at 13:03I forgot to mention that the liner notes reveal that when The Artwoods sometimes backed other RnB artists (sans Art then as their lead singer), they would then be – wait for it! -billed as the “John (sic!) Lord Four“! 😎 Which says something about Jo(h)n’s standing in the group as does the fact that he penned one of their few own numbers:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hcd1SxrvXtA
January 22nd, 2026 at 22:51I might be shoveling coal to Newcastle for some of you here, but I have – shamefully so – never until now realized what all the buzz about Hammond organs is about. I knew they sounded better and were a desired and rare commodity, but I didn’t know WHY they sounded better.
I’m beginning to grasp it now: Up until 1975 their organ sound – unlike other electric organs of the time, the Lowrey among them – was not wholly electronically generated, but electromechanically/electromagnetically with so-called tone-wheels which generated a signal that was magnetically picked up by a dedicated pickup – much like a guitar or bass pickup transforms the swinging steel string of a guitar into sound:
https://youtu.be/8DRvzMIBgac
And a Hammond sure had a lot of these tone-wheels! 🤗🤣
https://www.youtube.com/shorts/NsO7eKMmjLo
Now I know why they were so friggin’ heavy!
One lives and learns … I’ve never really been close to (or played, I can do a couple of chords on piano and organ) a tone-wheel Hammond in real life before – only to keyboards by Korg or Nord that emulated the Hammond sound electronically, so cut me some slack!!! I only looked into the matter deeper due to the liner notes of the above Artwoods release hilariously mentioning how a freshly proud owner of a Lowrey organ called Jon L got a dressing-down from no one less than fellow keys-man Graham Bond
https://youtu.be/bUwrjbeXK-0
“Now what the fuck have you got there?!”,
because the poor novice organist had not been aware of the all-important tone-wheels difference! 😂 Haven’t we all been there in one way or another before …
January 23rd, 2026 at 06:54The wonders of a Hammond cropping up in unexpected places …
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2OX4Gxuv5RY&t=90s
A worthy tribute to the Dutch masters, nuff said.
January 23rd, 2026 at 08:13Thanks for the head up Uwe. The box set released god knows when is great and this will complete the set of early JL for me.
January 23rd, 2026 at 16:09@9
Not the worst cover of that song that I’ve heard…
As a drummer I find that video hilarious in that it proves that bass guitar-players are unnecessary. 🙂
January 25th, 2026 at 00:04@ 8 – What?????????? Uwe sends a video link about the Hammond organ and also under the early Jon Lord band The Artwoods article and there is no mention of Jon or DP in that list of Hammond artists in the video. Some of those artists mentioned are not really that ‘known’ for their Hammond influence as such. Shall we let this faux pas go unheeded or do we call for some sort of mutiny here at THS. Cheers.
January 25th, 2026 at 04:07@ 11- careful Russ, don’t poke the bear. Uwe could still be getting over his jet lag, a similar feeling no doubt as to waking from hibernation, be very careful. I have pointed out to Uwe this conundrum a few years ago, a few artists that didn’t require a bass guitarist, for whatever reason. Well, at least on some of their records. The Doors of course, Atomic Rooster (one album I am aware of) and even Uwe’s much beloved Judas Priest didn’t use one in the 90’s wasn’t it and they had Don Airey play the bass notes on the keyboard. And JP had a bass guitarist in their lineup. Hmmmmmmmm, interesting indeed. Maybe all the artists mentioned didn’t need anyone to make the cups of tea or change any light bulbs etc. I wonder who they got to do that? Cheers.
January 25th, 2026 at 04:35I have long given up reacting to drummers’ inane comments – it is a most futile exercise. 😑
Especially that darn drummer dingo … and we all know how dangerously those now live on Fraser Island/K’gari!
January 25th, 2026 at 11:36Interesting that there was a two-track machine permanently installed at the venue.
Ten Years After recorded their first live LP there in 1968, “Undead”, but ran wires from neighboring Decca studios in order to do so.
If the managers of Klooks Kleek were able to record in-house… Wonder how regularly they did so. Since DP MKII played their fifth-ever gig there in July 1969, maybe there is a slim hope that a tape might surface!
January 26th, 2026 at 23:39https://www.purple.de/dirk/purple/mark2.php
Skippy, they did so pretty regularly, there are Klooks Kleek live recordings from John Mayall, Graham Bond, Zoot Money, Cream and as you said Ten Years After. (By 1968, a two track live recording would have hardly been state of the art anymore hence the help from Decca Studios! 😂)
I guess that at least in the beginning the club used the recordings via (pirate) radio airplay as advertisement for its existence.
It closed down at the end of 1970, to be later reopened under the moniker Moonlight Club, but not so much as a live venue anymore, but as a disco. It became one of the London in-places for the Northern Soul movement and also saw Punk gigs.
January 27th, 2026 at 08:26Thanks Uwe. It’s just arrived courtesy of Orinoco or Paraná or whatever it’s called. Much better sound than the Funny Park set
January 29th, 2026 at 14:10