Steve Knight
1935 – January 18, 2013
Steve Knight is best remembered as the original keyboardist for American hard rock band, Mountain. Formed in 1967 by bassist and famed Cream producer, Felix Pappalardi, the band, which also included singer and guitar great, Leslie West, went on to have one of the era’s most familiar songs, “Mississippi Queen.” Climbing!, their debut album from which it came, reached #17 on the Billboard charts and achieved Gold status. Their two follow-up albums failed to produce any hit singles but did achieve Gold status as well. In 1969, Mountain was one of the highlights of Woodstock with just their fourth live performance ever. Although they can be heard on the album, they did not appear in the legendary film of the event. After Mountain broke up in 1972, Knight returned to his first love, traditional jazz. He enjoyed a long musical career as a sound engineer, author, songwriter and session player. He was known to pop up on stage with West from time to time as well. During the mid 90s, Knight settled in Woodstock, New York, where he was active in local politics, serving two terms on the Woodstock Town Board. Steve Knight died of Parkinson’s disease on January 18, 2013.
Thanks to David Plastic from erockphotos.com for the assist.
What You Should Own
Just found this out from Leslie West's page. Sad 🙁
Steve Knight was The Greatest Keyboard Artist of them All. Just listen to all of Mountain's albums that have him playing. He's the Original Bad-Azz Keyboardist.
Steve Knight added textures and layers of sound to Mountain. Listen to “Nantucket Sleighride” or “Road Goes Ever On” and the keyboards are allowed to open up, showing what a great musician he was. Steve was like Felix, and could play a number of instrument well, and was doing a lot of stuff before Mountain, He had previously played with blues legend “Dave Van Ronk” (2 lps) and jazz flute legend Herbie Mann on one of his live lps. Steve also played with some lesser known bandss and made albums with them and was doing session work with Felix. I exchanged several letters with him at the turn of the decade. A friendly guy and answered all my music questions