The Nice were an English progressive rock band active in the late 1960’s. They blended rock, jazz and classical music and were keyboardist Keith Emerson’s first commercially successful group. The group was first formed in 1967 by Emerson, Lee Jackson, David O’List, and Ian Hague to back soul singer P. P. Arnold. The group’s sound was centred on Emerson’s Hammond organ showmanship and abuse of the instrument, and their radical rearrangements of classical music themes and Bob Dylan songs. (More from Wikipedia)
On June 6, 1966, Keith Emerson – later a founding member of the Nice and Emerson, Lake and Palmer – told Bruno Ceriotti that he was in the audience for a performance by the Soul Agents at the Marquee Club. As reported by Ceriotti on his blog: “The not yet famous organ God Keith Emerson was in the audience during one of the band’s Marquee shows that summer, and was duly inspired by Don Shinn’s act that featuring hilarious stage antics such as a habit of disappearing around the back of his organ to draw out weird sounds with the aid of a screwdriver, and also ‘treated’ adaptations of classical pieces such as an arrangement of Edvard Grieg’s Piano Concerto in A Minor, one of the most popular of all piano concerti. Seeing Don Shinn do that, made Keith Emerson realise that he’d like to compile an act from what Don did.”
(May 2014)
