The Nice - Daddy where did I come from

The Nice were an English progressive rock band from the late 1960s. They blended rock, jazz and classical music and were keyboardist Keith Emerson's first commercially successful band. For a band who helped draw up the prog-rock blueprint, late Sixties progressive / psychedelic rock band, they had unlikely beginnings. While they did not last more than three years, they were a major influence in bridging the gap between the psychedelic rock of the Sixties and the progressive rock of the Seventies. Led by Emerson (later of Emerson, Lake & Palmer) they were one of the first bands to fuse rock with an orchestra. The group's stage performances featured Emerson's Hammond organ showmanship and abuse of the instrument. Their compositions included radical rearrangements of classical music themes and Bob Dylan songs. The band were infamous for being banned from playing the Royal Albert Hall in 1968 when Emerson set fire to an American flag when playing the song, “America”, originally by Sondheim and Bernstein (I won’t elaborate on this as I’ve previously written a separate article on this). During much of their three years together, The Nice were more of a cult act than actual stars but they eventually did find major success in England and an international following and, in the course of making some great records and playing even finer shows, they laid the groundwork for the entire progressive rock explosion. It was with The Nice that Keith Emmerson began his transformation from an unknown musician into an international rock star. Ironically, the origins of the band made them a seemingly unlikely cutting-edge outfit. They were initially conceived as a backing band, à la Booker T. & the MG's, for American-born soul singer P.P. Arnold, an ex-member of the Ikettes (who producer, manager, and music mogul Andrew Oldham hoped to make into the next Tina Turner). Keyboard player Keith Emerson had previously played in Gary Farr & the T-Bones, and the new group's rhythm section was filled by T-Bones alumni Lee Jackson on bass and Ian Hague on drums, while former Attack guitarist, Davy O'List filled the fourth spot. The latter by recommendation from journalist Chris Welch. The name came from Arnold saying, "Here comes the Naz", which the group misheard as "the Nice". After the T Bones dissolved in early 1967, Emerson briefly played with the VIPs, who toured the Star-Club in Hamburg, and his playing style became influenced by the organist Don Shinn, including standing up to play the instrument and rocking it on stage. Meanwhile, P. P. Arnold, who’d reached a higher level of popularity in the UK than her native US, was unhappy with her backing band, the Blue Jays, and wanted a replacement. Her driver suggested Emerson would be able to put together such a group. Emerson agreed, but only on the condition the band could perform on their own as a warm-up act. Since it effectively meant getting two bands for the price of one, manager Andrew Loog Oldham readily agreed. Part of their role was to warm up the crowd for Arnold's entrance, and the singer told them to play anything they liked. As a result, slipped in between covers of various soul standards was a brace of ever more ambitious originals composed by the group members, and soon their opening sets began building a following of their own. The band played its first gig in May 1967, and had its first major break at the 7th National Jazz and Blues Festival in Windsor on 13 August. Oldham had managed to secure a separate set for the group in a side tent away from also accompanying Arnold on the main stage, where they gained attention. The next week, Welch wrote in the Melody Maker that "it was the first time I had seen a group actually in the act of winning its first following in quite dramatic circumstances". When Arnold went back to her family in the US shortly afterwards, Oldham offered the group a contract of their own. Hague was not interested in the "progressive" direction the group wanted to go in, so he was replaced by former Mark Leeman Five and Habits drummer, Brian Davison. Due to YouTube's restrictions on character length I've put the rest of the history in the comments. Dig in! It's interesting stuff