Don Shinn: How fame eluded a wizard of the keys

Ron Counte

In the summer of 1966 a young musician was wowing the crowd at The Marquee Club in London. He was playing rock adaptations of works by Grieg and Bach on his L100 Hammond organ but it wasn’t the incredible virtuosity of his playing that amazed the onlookers. It was the fact that he was stabbing the keys with a screwdriver and rocking the instrument back and forth, triggering explosive sounds from the spring reverb unit.

You would be forgiven for thinking that this was Keith Emerson in action. Emerson was indeed there but in the audience, standing open-mouthed and experiencing a Road to Damascus epiphany. The organist was Don Shinn of The Soul Agents.

The Hammond organ was a particularly unwieldy instrument, looking more like a piece of antique furniture than something you would expect to see on the stage at a rock concert. Emerson later became famous for his gymnastic abuses of the instrument, but it was Shinn who first demonstrated that, in the hands of a showman, it could become something of a visual spectacle.

In his biography Pictures Of An Exhibitionist, Emerson states: ‘I realised from watching Don that you could sustain notes on the Hammond by sticking things in the keyboard, and that I’d like to compile an act from what he did.’ Shinn even beat Emerson to the punch in his choice of drummer, enlisting Brian Davison a year before he joined Emerson in The Nice.

But while Emerson went on to become a renowned rock star, founding the supergroup Emerson, Lake & Palmer, Shinn remained largely unknown which is odd given his undoubted technical ability and unique showmanship. It’s particularly perplexing given the rising popularity of the instrument in the late Sixties. In addition to Emerson strutting his stuff, other notable Hammond aficionados included Vincent Crane of Atomic Rooster, Brian Auger, Tony Kaye of Yes, Graham Bond, Matthew Fisher of Procol Harum, Jon Lord of Deep Purple and Rick Wakeman of The Stawbs and later Yes.

Shinn’s formative experiences with The Soul Agents augured well for a promising career in music. They signed a record deal with Pye and their early singles I Just Want to Make Love To You/ Mean Woman Blues in 1964 and the sequel The Seventh Son/ Let’s Make it Pretty Baby in the same year were produced by Tony Hatch. They failed to chart. However, the band’s live performances, probably largely due to Shinn’s keyboard antics, did garner attention and they found work backing A-listers such as Rod Stewart, Little Walter and Buddy Guy.

Another single Don’t Break It Up appeared in 1965, but again failed to make an impression. However, the B side, Gospel Train, a Shinn-composed organ instrumental, was later used as a signature tune for Radio Caroline. It was perhaps at this point that Shinn realised that instrumentals were the way to go. The band were signed to Polydor in 1966 and their next single comprised two instrumental pieces penned by Shinn but the band were rapidly running out of steam and started to break up. Shinn left The Soul Agents to go solo.

His entirely instrumental debut album Temples With Prophets, recorded in late 1967, wasn’t released until early 1969 which didn’t help, and the follow-up, Departures, was more jazz orientated. It featured jazz legend Stan Tracey but reviewers weren’t impressed. ‘It just goes to show that jazz organ can be dull in any context,’ exclaimed Melody Maker. Record Retailer branded it ‘strictly for jazz addicts’. By this time Shinn was playing cabaret in a country club in South Wales. There were to be no more solo albums.

As a session man Shinn had contributed organ, electric piano and harpsichord on James Taylor’s 1968 debut album. With bands such as The Echoes and Dada he had backed Dusty Springfield, Kiki Dee and Elkie Brooks.

Temples with Prophets features a revised version of A Minor Explosion, the 1966 single release by The Soul Agents. It predates Emerson’s work with The Nice by over a year but would sit comfortably within their catalogue featuring as it does the gritty Hammond sound beloved of Emerson. It contains several direct quotations from Grieg’s Piano Concerto In A Minor which go entirely uncredited. This was common practice in the Sixties and Emerson himself later had to credit composers such as Béla Bartók for ‘borrowing’ melodies. The B side, Pits of Darkness, features the heavy distortion that would become an Emerson trademark.

The album is an eclectic mix of heavy organ pieces and more psychedelic forays such as the title track which starts with acoustic guitar, transitions to a poppy Hammond number and eventually lurches into a lengthy church organ passage. As if that were not enough he introduces Monophonic Interlude For Pianoforte No1, clearly lifting extracts from the hymn Jerusalem and again failing to credit the original composer, before returning to more Hammond doodling. This probably explains why the album was retitled Don Shinn Takes A Trip for the French release.

Don emigrated to Norway in 1974 where he played piano on cruises and in hotels and theatres for 20 years before returning home to Southampton to become a full-time carer for his mother and playing in clubs and restaurants. He outlived his famous protégé. Keith Emerson suffered with debilitating Ulna nerve problems, severely affecting two fingers of his right hand and making it increasingly impossible for him to play. In March 2016, depressed by the thought that he could not perform to an acceptable standard on a planned tour of Japan, he took his own life. Shinn passed away in 2023, obscure to the last. He must have wondered why stardom had eluded him so cruelly.

Ron Counte worked in the music industry with US amp and guitar manufacturer Line 6. He is an amateur musician and has played keyboards in various bands. He is currently trying to free up space in his home by reducing his Hammond organ collection from four down to three.

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