Looking back: Talent Bradford Rock and Roll Drummer Keith Artist

Keith was born in St. Luke's Hospital in 1941 and lived in Wilsden and Thornton before moving to Swain House. He later went to Bel Vère Boys School and his family moved to Delph Hill in Wyke.

After leaving school, he worked in the office as a fruit and vegetable merchant. Keith became interested in early skiffle music and became friends with three other musically heartfelt young people while living in Delph Hill. They formed the 789 skiffle group, later renamed the Delph Boys and practiced in the front room on Sunday afternoons. He once wanted to play guitar, but he gave up because he needed some rhythm sections in the group. He was able to play the washboard.

After the end of the Delph Boys, Keith became a self-taught drummer. Fascinated with rock and roll, he purchased a drum kit from Harmony House on Bridge Street. Around this time he quit his job at the market and joined the Atlas Haulage Company, a traffic office. He spent most of his free time practicing drum sequences for hits from the 1950s. It paid off. He was an accomplished drummer right away. For a while, he joined the 7-piece group Sobey Dance Band, and quickly became a quartet. His first move to rock and roll joined Dal Stevens and Fordukes from 1959 to 60. This group had to practice somewhere, and a total of 5/-dal sourced a local swimming bath in Stohill, Wyke on Sunday morning. The first practice worked well. Come on the second Sunday, the locals already had enough! Again they won't wake up by a promising rock and roll group that will ruin the lies of Sunday mornings. The group set up the equipment and barely moved Cliff Richard's movements. A deadly missile in the shape of a half brick crashed one of the windows, with Keith's head and his precious drum kit slightly missing. No group has dismantled guitars, amps, or drums during such a record time. They probably left Wyke at the laughter from residents of Storr Hill, which could become one of the world's leading groups, with one missile.

The next group that Keith joined in 1961-1962 was the Crusaders, a tip top band with excellent musicians, coded by the popular Cliff Dutton, but as the group acquired a season in Germany, Keith declined the invitation due to family and career commitments. In 1963, he decided it was time to form his group, four musketeers. The group was popular on local circuits, doing the Beatles, Rolling Stones and Chuckberry covers in South Yorkshire. They folded in the second half of 1965. In the mid-60s, Keith was playing with Davely and Dennis Oliver at the Red Lion Pub in Bankfoot. From the 1970s he played with Tony Earl and a band called Revelation and Shambles. In the 1980s, he reshaped four musketeers under his revival, playing with many groups from 2002 to 04 to 44 years later, when he retired from the Atlas Haulage Company. After years of playing guitar, ukulele, harmonica and keyboards as a drummer, he is a cyclist and he and his 46-year-old wife, Anne, enjoyed caravans at Cambria and family home in Queensbury.

Keith was one of Bradford's original rock and roll musicians, a respected, exciting and inventive drummer who could perfectly replicate parts from the record. His drum solo was memorable. Very shy, not too many words, a great talented man.