Tony Ashton dies

["Brian Cady" <cadyb@home.com>]

Tony Ashton, keyboardist with John Entwistle's Rigor Mortis and Ox, has
died. Here's more from the Guardian at:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/obituaries/story/0,3604,523806,00.html

Session musician and record producer Tony Ashton, who has died of cancer
aged 55, was singer, keyboard player and composer with the group Ashton,
Gardner and Dyke. In 1971 their only hit Resurrection Shuffle reached number
two in the British charts.

Born of a musical family in Blackburn, Ashton grew up in Blackpool. Before
leaving school at 15, he was already a competent pianist and organist,
having absorbed the fluid styles of Jimmy Smith, Brother Jack McDuff and
other American artists who had transported jazz to the borders of pop.

In the early 1960s, after a spell touring Scandinavia as a member of Jimmy
Justice and the Jury, he returned to Blackpool to form the Executives, with
whom he recorded three singles. He went on to work with various minor
Merseybeat outfits before Brian Epstein invited him to join the instrumental
group, the Remo Four, early in 1965.

As well as recording in their own right, the outfit backed Johnny Sandon,
Gregory Phillips and Tommy Quickly. At Ashton's instigation, the Four also
developed a jazz-rock repertoire as heard on a German LP, Smile (1967). Back
home, they assisted George Harrison on the soundtrack for the Jane Birkin
film Wonderwall (1968), which was the first LP issued on the Beatles' Apple
label.

In 1971, Harrison hired Ashton to play on his All Things Must Pass
triple-album. By then, Ashton, Gardner and Dyke - with Remo Four drummer Roy
Dyke and bass guitarist Kim Gardner from the Creation - were up and running.
Their first single, Maiden Voyage (1969), had been followed by the album
Ashton, Gardner and Dyke. Among its highlights was Vaggsang, Ashton's
Debussy-esque piano solo.

Resurrection Shuffle, however, was an upbeat opus that lived mainly in a
brash horn section and Ashton's ebullient vocal. His flair for showmanship
came to the fore on television, and the disc sold especially well in Germany
and the United States. An associated album, The Worst Of Ashton, Gardner and
Dyke (1971), featured George Harrison, but neither it nor further releases
were commercial successes, and the trio disbanded in 1973.

Later, Ashton passed through the ranks of Chicken Shack, John Entwistle's
Rigor Mortis, Medicine Head and Family, and served as producer for Kenny
Ball, Ian Dury and Chas and Dave. His hand in extra-mural ventures by Deep
Purple's Jon Lord led to The First Of The Big Bands (1974), attributed to
"Ashton and Lord", and then a merger with drummer Ian Paice as Paice, Ashton
and Lord (PAL). An album, Malice In Wonderland (1977), was promoted with a
British tour. Ashton also featured at Star-Club reunion spectaculars in the
late 1970s, and co-hosted - with Rick Wakeman - the 1983 Channel 4 pop
series, Gastank.

During successively longer gaps between musical projects, he also made
headway as a painter, until cancer was diagnosed in 1999. He is survived by
his wife Sandra and step-daughter Indira.

• Tony Ashton, musician, born March 1 1946; died May 30 2001

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