THE NAKED CITY – MIKE NOCK’S RECORD LEGACY

We are all familiar with artists selling their paintings for relatively small amounts of money and then later seeing them traded for Sotheby’s style prices. The same escalation of value is rare in the mass produced music recording industry, however the renewed interest in vinyl has thrown up some very collectable, and rather pricey, items.

Take the case of Sydney jazz musician, the acclaimed pianist and composer Mike Nock, who recorded the ground breaking album ‘Move’ back in 1960, later described by Dick Hughes in the Daily Telegraph as “one of the greatest jazz recordings ever made in Australia”. Some years ago Mike spotted an original vinyl copy of the album for sale on a Japanese website for $3000, and the album is now highly sought by collectors all over the world.

Not surprisingly other albums from Mike’s back catalogue also demand high prices amongst vinyl obsessives. When the noted crate digger Donny Benet was in Sydney last year for the At First Sight vinyl festival at Carriageworks, he admitted that he had secured his holy grail some years ago – a copy of Mike’s 1970 album Between or Beyond, purchased for a mere $1000!

The good news of course is that you can now enjoy the music on albums such as ‘Move’ for the price of a digitally enhanced CD. Even better, you can experience a special live performance from Mike and a present day version of the Three Out Trio at Foundry 616 next week. Some 55 years later, Mike and two new members of the trio will be revisiting the original album, reinventing it for the modern day. As Mike explained:

“We’re learning the original arrangements as a starting point to play the music from our current perspective. This is turning out to be a bigger challenge than I originally thought, but I’m finding it an incredibly interesting process and a huge journey of self-discovery, as the music contains most of the concepts I’ve spent my lifetime exploring ever since. It may be true one can never go home again – but maybe that’s because we really never leave it!”

The album certainly evokes a historic and exciting time in the Australian jazz scene, with seminal clubs like El Rocco in the Cross. As Mike recalled:

“Our music was very exciting and energetic, no one had heard music played like this in Australia before and we very quickly began drawing capacity crowds to our gigs. We appeared on several TV shows like Six O’clock Rock and were generating a huge buzz around town.”

The original Three Out Trio featured drummer Chris Karan and Dutch bassist Freddie Logan, and had a major impact on the face of Australian modern jazz. After their inaugural album ‘Move’ became a best-seller (and where are all those vinyl copies?), they played on the 1960 Jazz Festival sharing the bill with names like Dizzy Gillespie, Sarah Vaughn, Coleman Hawkins and Teddy Wilson, later touring New Zealand and recording the follow up album ‘Sittin’ In’.

Unfortunately Mike does not have a large box of these original vinyl albums sitting in his garage at home, but the monetary value is secondary to the importance of the release. As he notes:

“Apart from being the first hard-swinging local modern jazz album released in Australia, ‘Move’ was also the first recording of my quite extensive international catalogue, which would make it attractive to many record collectors. It took me many years to appreciate how good this first album was, as I always thought I played much better on the follow-up album ‘Sittin’ In’, but musicians are often the worst judges of their own performances.”

Mike Nock is joined by bassist Brett Hirst and drummer James Waples for ‘Three Out Redux’:
Friday Feb 12, 8:30pm. Foundry 616, 616 Harris Street, Ultimo. $16.50-$21.50 (dinner & show packages available). Tickets & info: foundry616.com.au or stickytickets.com.au

CD copies of the original Move album are available from Birdland Records in Sydney.