After the global success of their 1964 House Of The Rising Sun, the Animals achieved a status only perhaps exceeded within Britain by the Beatles and the Rolling Stones. But the Newcastle- upon-Tyne group was built around the volatile partnership of vocalist Eric Burdon and keyboards player Alan Price. In mid-1965, without warning, Price left the group. Burdon nominated Dave Rowberry, who has died aged 62, following a history of heart problems, as Price's replacement.
Rowberry, Burdon observed, gave the band a new colour and even looked like Price. Meanwhile, the keyboard player was plunged into touring, television appearances and recording sessions. He featured on the We Gotta Get Out Of This Place, Inside Looking Out and Don't Bring Me Down singles, plus the album, Animalism, which contained the Rowberry-Burdon number You're On My Mind.
In 1965 the group, augmented by a seven-piece horn section recruited from London's jazz scene, featured spectacularly at the Richmond Jazz and Blues festival. And Rowberry's jazz experience was crucial to the success of that performance.
Although his musicianship suited the Animals' style, the cultural fit was more difficult. With a less aggressive personality than Price, he had joined what guitarist Hilton Valentine called a Geordie clique. By 1966, even the Geordie clique factionalised.
Burdon, Valentine and new drummer Barry Jenkins moved towards psychedelia. The others "stayed with their old world alcoholic attitudes. They couldn't understand us and we laughed at them" was how Burdon put it. The inevitable split came in September 1966.
Rowberry was born in Nottingham. He studied at Newcastle University and mixed with the city's coterie of jazz and rhythm and blues musicians and fans - which included Burdon. In 1962, soon after leaving university, he became a pianist with trumpeter Mike Cotton's traditional jazz band, which had a small 1963 hit with Swing That Hammer.
But the early 1960s trad jazz boom was over, buried under the avalanche of amplified rhythm and blues, and Cotton's Jazzmen metamorphosed into the Mike Cotton Sound with Rowberry on Vox organ. In the mid-1960s the group played 300 gigs a year nationwide. They accompanied visiting Americans such as Stevie Wonder and Solomon Burke - and were even commended by James Brown.
After the Animals' split, Rowberry slipped into the anonymity of the London recording scene. He worked with singer-songwriter Clair Hammill, ex-Jimi Hendrix bass player Noel Redding (obituary May 15 2003) and blues groups led by Dana Gillespie and others.
He returned to full-time performing only in 1999, when original Animals drummer John Steel invited him to join the Animals and Friends, a group dedicated to reproducing the 1960s hits on tour in north America and Europe.
A week before Rowberry's death they performed in South Shields as part of the Cookson Festival. Steel recalled how the keyboard man loved playing with a band, the social life on the road and "having a good gig and meeting new people".
· David Eric Rowberry, musician, born July 4 1940; died June 6 2003