Keef Hartley Band

Keef Hartley was a fine British musician &, one of the great ‘almosts’ of British rock history. Hhe was the guy who took the drum stool for Rory Storm & The Hurricanes when Ringo left to join the Beatles: he joined The Artwoods with Jon Lord & Art Wood (Ronnie’s big brother): went on to John Mayall’s Bluesbreakers until being dismissed over the phone and replaced by Jon Hiseman. He formed The Keef Hartley Band in 1968, signed almost immediately for Deram and in ’69 was one of the British contingent at Woodstock alongside Ten Years After & The Who but he was the act who didn’t appear on the movie or the 3LP soundtrack because of management difficulties.
What he was though, was the leader of one of the best British outfits in the sixties and seventies.

The names that passed through the KHB are like a history of British Blues, jazz & rock of the time. KHB had a policy of playing with friends and people that they knew, so names drift in and out but the core was Hartley, Anderson, Thain & Lowther
The first album, ‘Halfbreed’ included Spit James on guitar, Gary Thain on bass, Miller Anderson on vocals & guitar and Peter Dines on organ & harpsichord, plus a horn section of Henry Lowther, Harry Beckett, Lyn Dobson & Chris Mercer.
The opening jam leads into a superb album of jazz based R&B. Miller Anderson’s vocals delivered the Blues numbers with real depth and passion and, to an extent, set the format for what was to come.

The seven album in this boxset see all the different line ups, different formations and different styles but at the heart of this is Keef Hartley’s drumming and Miller Anderson’s songwriting and vocals.
To an extent, they were a British equivalent of Blood Sweat And Tears but there are elements of jazz as well as the Blues and rock which give them a personal identity.

The Keef Hartley Band were a perfect example of the spread and depth of the bands that were touring and recording in the lates sixties and seventies and while the likes of Miller Anderson would make a solo career, Gary Thain would go on to form Uriah Heep, Jon Hiseman was the founder of Colosseum, Mick Weaver picked up credits with a host of headline acts, through the seven albums The Keef Hartley Band had a consistency like few others.

The package includes a host of bonus tracks and a quality mastering from the original tapes. The booklet included contains Hartley’s own comments on the recording of each album.