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Col Nolan
Col
Nolan is known
as the Grandfather of Hammond on the Sydney scene.
Also arguably Australia's hardest swinging jazz pianist Col Nolan
has been in the music business over forty years, much of his time
was spent with leaders such as - Frank Coughlan (of Sydney
Trocadero fame), Ray Price, John Sangster, plus The Daly Wilson Big
Band
(of which he was a founding member) and so on. He also led his own
groups at the El Rocco Jazz Cellar in the sixties.
He was something of a pioneer of electric keyboards and Hammond B3
organ
in Australia with Little Sammy and The In People in the sixties,
and his own Soul Syndicate.
Plus The Galapagos Duck in the seventies and eighties.
C
ol Nolan also enjoyed some fame in the mid seventies with
that
Rare phenomenon in popular music, a jazz record that made it big on
the top 40-
Theme from Picnic at Hanging Rock
recorded in 1977 by The Nolan Buddle Quartet (with Errol
Buddle).
In recent years he has been busy working with other artists
(eg:James Morrison, John Nicol, Harry Rivers, etc) as well as a few
overseas tours.
Now, with the resurgence of the Hammond organ in popular music,
Nolan is enjoying playing on CDs and concerts with various jazz and
blues bands, Janet Seidel, John Leigh Calder, The Foreday Riders,
Warren Daly Quartet & Big Band to name a few.
He has shared the bill with such international artists as . The
Modern Jazz Quartet,
Benny Goodman,
Dave Brubeck,
Stephane Grapelli, Dizzy Gillespie,
Clark Terry,
Roland Kirk,
Carmen Macrae,
Les McCann, plus many more along the way.
The CD "NOLAN'S GROOVE (La Brava LB9601) was a finalist in the
1998ARIA Awards for best Australian jazz recording of the
year.
The OXFORD COMPANION TO AUSTRALIAN JAZZ
summarises Col Nolan in one sentence. "A player of greater
stylistic versatility, possessing to an unsurpassed degree, that
compulsive but indefinable capacity called swing".
Col can be found playing a Hammond XK2 through a Leslie 760. His
left hand bass playing is legendary
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