Press blurb for Col Nolan reissue, on Lance Ferguson's (Bamboos, Lanu) new reissue label Pacific Theatre Encore, out Nov 29 on CD/LP. The album has some great versions of popular songs like Angel of the morning, and Sunny, to name but a few:
"Col Nolan is recognised as one of (if not the) most important keyboard players in Australian jazz, his career spanning almost sixty years and moving through easily the styles of jazz dominant in each decade, but it’s his Hammond organ playing that he’s most well known for, which easily rivalled US greats such like Jimmy Smith and Jimmy McGriff.
He has shared the stage with such international greats as The Modern Jazz Quartet, Benny Goodman, Dave Brubeck, Dizzy Gillespie, Clark Terry, Roland Kirk, Carmen Macrae, Les McCann, plus many more along the way.
In the early and mid 1960s he was a fixture as both a leader and sideman at pivotal Sydney jazz clubs The Trocadero and El Rocco Jazz Cellar.
In 1966 he formed the Soul Syndicate and released his first album Crazy Crochet in 1966. But the Soul Syndicate he formed and recorded Whatever It’s Worth with in ’68 would be one of the greatest ever Australian jazz combos, with John Sangster on drums, John Allan on bass, “Diamond” Jimmy Doyle on guitar and Col Loughnan on tenor sax.
That album has since been regarded as not just one of Australia’s funkiest jazz albums, but comparable to the best soul jazz albums of the era on labels like Prestige and Blue Note.
The band honed their breakbeat heavy soul jazz sound at Sydney’s premiere nightclub at the time, Whiskey A Go Go (pictured below), in the heart of Kings Cross, the city’s bustling red light district, which is now sadly a shadow of its former self thanks to the crushing lock out laws put on licensed venues in the area in 2015.
John Sangster released three highly prized albums on Festival in the late ‘60s, performed in the local production of ‘Hair’, where he met and later collaborated with Prog Rock greats, Tully. His more avant leaning Lord Of The Rings inspired albums in the ‘70s have also become highly collectable.
Col Loughnan and Jimmy Doyle joined the internationally lauded jazz rock group Ayers Rock in 1973, who went on to become one of the first Australian bands to perform in large stadiums in the U.S. Subsequent Soul Syndicate releases, such as their early ‘70s tunes “Buckingham Palace”, “What’s The Use” and the album Live At Jason’s have become highly-sought after vinyl artifacts for DJs, sample hunters and collectors after appearing on compilations of Australian jazz, funk and soul such as the seminal Heading In The Right Direction, released by the Luv N’ Haight label in 1995.
In the ‘70s Nolan was a founding member of The Daly Wilson Big Band, whose tracks such as “Dirty Feet” have been heavily sampled, by the likes of Mobb Deep, Cypress Hill, Pete Rock, DJ Krush, DJ Shadow and Large Professor. He was something of a pioneer of electric keyboards with fusion pioneers Galapagos Duck in the later seventies and into the eighties.
His version of the “Theme from Picnic at Hanging Rock” recorded in 1977 was one of the few Australian jazz recordings to ever reach the top 40.
Nolan kept playing well into the twenty first century, and passed away in 2019, but not before happy knowing that Whatever It’s Worth was going to be reissued and be widely available for the first time."
Resident Music says "The album is lead by some cracking originals written by Nolan, Loughnan and Sangster including the two Mod dancefloor burners, "Shades Of McSoul", the title track and the breakbeat monster "Rivera Mountain".
But their versions of popular soings of the time are more like re-inventions, such as the drum heavy, low slung take on Bobbie Gentry's "Ode To Billie Joe" and a superlative rendition of Jimmy Webb's "By The Time I Get To Phoenix", which builds to a frantic, swirling psychedelic crescendo to close the album.
"Pacific Theatre Encore will be reissuing music from across the globe, but it was important to me for the first release to shine a light on the important legacy of our own scene" says Ferguson, who meticulously restored the audio himself, which was then remastered.
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| Col Nolan |
Discography
Col Nolan & The Soul Syndicate
Crazy Crochet (1966 CBS)
Whatever It's Worth (1968 CBS / 2019 Pacific Theatre Encore)
Live At Jason's (1973 Avan-Guard)
"Buckingham Palace"/"What's The Use" (1973 Avan-Guard)
Col Nolan Quartet
"Love In Spring"/"Dry Country" (1977 M7)
Arangements (1976 M7)
The Nolan-Buddle Quartet
"My Machine"/"Killing Me Softly With His Love" (1975 M7)
"Picnic At Hanging Rock" (1976 M7)
The Odd Couple (1976 M7)
Col Nolan
The Main Stream (1990 2MBS-FM)
Nolan's Groove (1997La Brava)
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