Freddy Logan & The Three Out Trio
The Three Out were a short-lived Australian jazz trio who formed in 1960, released two albums, toured Europe, and then went their separate ways. The trio’s pianist Mike Nock made a name for himself in North America, while drummer Chris Karan toured the world in The Dudley Moore Trio, but although bass player Freddy Logan appeared on recordings with Pia Beck and Tubby Hayes, to name only two, less is known about him overall.
Across his career he was credited variously as Freddy Logan, Freddie Logan, and Fred Loggen. For the sake of clarity he is referred to as Freddy Logan in this article.
Freddy Logan was born Frederick Christian Loggen on 8 April 1930 in Amsterdam, Netherlands. In his late teens he became a prolific bass player, playing with bands around Europe, and his interest in the double bass first started after seeing it played at a school dance when he was 15.
“While the band was out of the hall having a smoko, I began plucking the strings of a double bass and liked the deep sound so much that I decided I wanted to learn it,” he recalled in 1958.
After buying a bass of his own, Freddy played in several local jazz bands and became a full-time musician in 1948, but didn’t take his first bass lesson until 1953. This led to him developing an unorthodox style which later made him stand out from others.
He got his break when Dutch singer and pianist Pia Beck asked him to join her trio in November 1949, with Carel de Vogel on guitar as their third member. Less than twelve months later they were invited to England to become the first Dutch artists to perform on BBC Television. They spent two months there before returning to the Netherlands for some further engagements back home.
While in Holland, Freddy met Australian actress and model Lucille Power. Originally from Bellevue, New South Wales, Lucille left Australia in 1951 and sang with Freddy’s band when he toured West Germany, telling The Australian Women’s Weekly it was the only time she ever felt nervous on stage because she’d never trained as a singer. The two married in October 1953 in Amsterdam.
Freddy left Amsterdam and moved to Germany in 1952 to lead his own band, and was joined by clarinettist Herman Schoonderwalt, trombonist Dick Bezemer, pianist Frans Elsen, and percussionist Ferdy Posthuma de Boer in 1953 when they formed a combo and played for the USAF. But after touring through Western Europe, Freddy decided to disband and settle in London. It was here Lucille acted in her first film in 1953, The Master of Ballantrae, and during their time in England she also appeared in 1954’s The Belles of St. Trinian’s, and 1955’s As Long as They’re Happy.
From December 1953 to June 1956 Freddy studied at the Guildhall School of Music in London and appeared on BBC Radio and TV. During this period he recorded with Kenny Graham’s Afro-Cubists, the Vic Ash Quartet, Harry Klein, the Tommy Whittle Band, and by mid-1955 he was playing across five different jazz clubs in England.
Following his studies, Freddy had a short stay in North Africa, playing for the US Air Force, before he and Lucille travelled to Australia, departing 26 June 1956 on board the S.S. Orontes from England to Sydney with their two month old son.
Originally their plan had been to make a short visit to Lucille’s family before travelling on to America to pursue Lucille’s acting career, but Freddy liked Australia and they settled in Sydney, with some of his extended family later joining them in 1958.
By November 1956, Freddy Logan was working as a bass teacher at Lou Campara Studio’s in Sydney, and was playing in a hotel with the Pat Caplice Trio. He then formed Jazz Club II at the beginning of 1957 with drummer Don Osborne, and after Don left for Melbourne, Freddy acted as president, treasurer, and secretary, as the club attracted some 1500 members during its first six months. Freddy told Music Maker magazine he wanted to emulate jazz clubs in England and allow younger musicians to sit in with those more experienced to create a higher standard of jazz musicians in Australia.
Famed Australian clarinettist Don Burrows was one of the members happy to sit in with any young group, and in 1957 they were back in the pages of Music Maker when the magazine ran a poll for the country’s best jazz players, with the winners to be given recording time in Sydney to release an LP. Announced in their July issue, the winners included several members of the Jazz Club II house band, including Freddy Logan and Don Burrows.
A 10” album Jazz In Australia Volume 5 was released September 1957 credited to the Music Maker 1957 All Stars, and leading up to the 1960s Freddy played with some other All Stars, with Dave Rutledge (tenor and alto sax, and flute), Don Burrows (clarinet), Ron Webber (drums), and Terry Wilkinson (piano), playing as part of Freddy Logan’s All Stars on Freddy’s radio program Jazz For Pleasure. The program was broadcast Wednesday nights between June to November 1958, with the band joined by guests such as Terri King on vocals.
1958 was also the year The Australian All Stars formed after Graeme Bennet opened his club the Sky Lounge in Sydney and needed a band. He contacted Terry Wilkinson about forming a group and The Australian All Stars were formed, featuring Dave Rutledge, Don Burrows, Ron Webber, and Terry Wilkinson, alongside Freddy Logan.
The Australian All Stars recorded two albums, Jazz For Beach-Niks and Jazz For Beach-Niks Volume 2, released in 1959 and 1960, and prior to their first album’s release, the band appeared on a series of radio programs and TV before getting their own show.
Elsewhere, Freddy Logan recorded with Johnny Ashcroft and Graeme Bell, Joe Loufer, The Don Burrows Six, and visiting US singer Russ Arno. Freddy helped put together a band for Arno, which included Australian All Stars, and regular Freddy Logan collaborators, Don Burrows, Dave Rutledge, Ron Webber, Terry Wilkinson, and Cyril Bevan. Their album Salute To Sinatra was released in Australia by Columbia, and Freddy had another connection to Sinatra that year too, as when Frank Sinatra toured Australia, he was part of the pitband, alongside other members of the Australian All Stars Terry Wilkinson and Dave Rutledge. The 14-piece group even accompanied Sinatra for the last few songs in his set.
But amongst all of this success as a musician, Freddy’s marriage seems to have ended within the first few years of his arrival in Australia. No one I spoke to recalled him having a wife, and in her autobiography A Whole Load of Front Australian singer Maria Venuti wrote of dating Freddy briefly while he played at the Sky Lounge. Their time together didn’t last, and Freddy remained busy touring, recording, and sitting in around Sydney. Even with the success of the All Stars, Freddy remained in demand as a bass player. But he would soon put all his focus into a new group after meeting Mike Nock and Chris Karan.
Over in New Zealand, Michael Anthony Nock was born 27 September 1940 in Christchurch. His father taught him some piano when he was 11 years old, and in his teens Mike began playing piano and alto saxophone in jazz bands. After moving to Auckland, he recorded with Johnny Devlin, appearing on his 1958 EP How Would ‘Ya Be, but he had greater ambitions and wanted to work in the USA. Deciding his best route there was via Australia, he stowed away on a boat, hiding in a friend’s cabin, and arrived in Sydney in 1958, aged 18.
After working odd jobs as a pianist, Mike was offered a place in the house band for a club in Melbourne. He happily took the job as it would allow him to play jazz fulltime, and this is where he began working with drummer Chris Karan.
Chris Karan was born Chrisostomos Karanikis to Greek parents in the Melbourne suburb of Carlton on 14 October 1939. He began playing drums in 1953, and two years later had become a full-time musician. He was playing at The Embers in Melbourne’s South Yarra area when Mike Nock joined him in 1959 and they began performing together for the first time.
The Embers was located at 55 Toorak Rd, with nearly 400 people attending the opening on August 3 1959. On August 20 The Embers advertised The Frank Thornton Quintette, including Frank Smith and Chris Karan with American musicians Wilmus Reeves and Carl Brown, who had arrived from San Francisco with vocalist Barbara Virgil from Sacramento.
Mike Nock joined later, but didn’t stay long because on November 9 the building burnt down as 400 patrons ran for cover. It’s a memory that is still strong with Chris Karan, as he told me.
“I tried to rush back to save my cymbals and the firemen grabbed me by the neck. I said, ‘I need to get my cymbals’, and he said, ‘You’re not going in there’, and he pushed me over. That was pretty horrific. We lost this lovely grand piano and my drum kit and everything else. That was the end of it.”
The band were paid over the summer on the condition they didn’t play anywhere else, so they spent the time rehearsing. Then when The Embers reopened in February 1960 the owner wanted the band to play more commercial music and wear chefs’ hats. Mike Nock wasn’t interested so he returned to Sydney and Chris Karan soon followed.
In Sydney, Mike Nock was looking to play any gigs he could get and he soon caught the eye of Freddy Logan who invited him to sit in with Don Burrows at El Rocco. Shortly after, American alto saxophone player Bob Gillett formed a band with Freddy Logan, Mike Nock, and Chris Karan for an engagement at El Rocco. The group then found gigs at other venues, working two to three nights a week until Bob Gillett left for New Zealand.
Following that short-lived group, Freddy wanted to form a trio with Mike and Chris, but Chris wasn’t available as he’d signed a six-month contract with accordionist Ronnie Fabri at the Rex Hotel.
Instead, English drummer Colin Bailey sat in, and the trio rehearsed together until Chris Karan was available again. With that, The Three Out were formed, and following some rehearsals with their solidified lineup they began to play El Rocco, and the Sydney jazz scene took notice.
“Thing happened really fast in those days,” Mike Nock told me. “I’m not so sure why that was. But looking at my history back then it was like, wow. So much seemed to happen in a very short period of time.”
“I think we made quite a bit of a sensation with the trio,” Chris Karan said. “There were people going crazy for the group and it was a terrific group to play in. Mike’s music and the way he played was really quite rewarding for me because it got me going and put me on the right track for the way I should be playing. It was just so inspiring and rewarding, and I was really grateful for that.”
The Three Out played a mixture of standards and originals, and the popularity of the group led El Rocco to extend their opening times to six days each week, with The Three Out playing on four. This also led to greater opportunities, and a few weeks after they had formed, The Three Out were invited to join Australian singer Diana Trask on a US tour. Unfortunately that didn’t happen, but after concert promoter Lee Gordon heard them, he managed to convince the group to leave El Rocco and start playing at his strip club The New Primitif. The new location meant The Three Out earned more money, but the audience’s focus wasn’t on the band anymore, so they soon returned to El Rocco.
Freddy Logan acted as the groups manager and was responsible for finding them gigs and recording sessions. Chris Karan said, “He was really our business manager, and he did quite well for us because Mike and I played okay, but we certainly weren’t businessmen by any means. But Freddy had the right idea and managed to make the right contacts.”
As noted earlier, Freddy Logan didn’t take bass lessons until some five years after he’d started playing professionally in the Netherlands, and Mike Nock told me his bass playing style really stood out. “He played the bass like someone that couldn’t play the bass, and I don’t mean that in a negative way, but it was like he was totally self taught. He must have been, because he didn’t play the bass like most bass players. I remember Freddy just kind of grabbing the bass in one hand and he was very rough and ready, but he had a great energy and he obviously had a lot of a musical ability and talent anyway.”
Tony Buckley was one of the many people who went to see The Three Out play at El Rocco and Freddy’s playing stood out for him too, as he recently told me. “He had a very unorthodox left hand fingering technique. Definitely not classically trained. Still got good jazz results though. [His style was] sort of a grabber and ugly to bassists trained with correct legitimate left hand and finger movements.”
Freddy himself noted it wasn’t an easy instrument, as he told a reporter in Australia in 1958. “The double bass is one of the most difficult instruments to play because of its size, and it scares taxi-drivers for the same reason, but I’m still glad I chose it.”
Regardless of the way he held his bass, after only six weeks together The Three Out recorded their debut album Move on September 28th and October 14th, 1960. Move was due for release mid-November, but arrived early-March 1961 when reviews started to appear in the press.
In their review, The Sydney Morning Herald highlighted Freddy Logan and his song Freshwater. They wrote, “Logan, as a bassist, is the best we have heard here. He has worked tirelessly for modern jazz both on the stand and off it, in the organising of groups, dates, and support for his music.”.
The album sold well in Australia and brought the group even more praise outside of their Sydney home. Move had many fans, but Mike Nock wasn’t one of them, as he told me.
“The thing is, I could hardly play the piano, to be really honest. I mean, I had spirit and energy and all that, but I was really, really, really rough. However, having said that, the first record was the one that was by far more successful. It really ignited some kind of interest in people, and I’m not sure why. I really had no technique whatsoever and I’m just doing the best I can. But it seems some resonated with that.”
While their stint at The New Primitif club didn’t last, Lee Gordon was still a fan and invited The Three Out to join a national jazz tour he was planning. The First Australian International Jazz Festival ran from October 26–29th with concerts in Adelaide, Brisbane, Melbourne, and Sydney, and alongside their own set, The Three Out trio also played as Gene McDaniels’ band.
Freddy Logan and Chris Karan also supported Dakota Staton and the Coleman Hawkins Quartet, and Chris sat in with Teddy Wilson after his drummer had to go back to the US.
“It was nice being with Coleman Hawkins,” Chris said. “He didn’t say a lot, but he played a lot. It was really nice of Lee Gordon to put this on because it was the very first international one that had happened in Australia. It’s just a shame it wasn’t filmed, that would have been terrific.”
Recordings of the festival were made for later broadcast on ABC Radio, but they’re no longer held in the ABC archives. Other recordings are scarce, with a short video held in the National Film and Sound Archive, and an audio recording of the Adelaide shows held by The Australian Jazz Museum.
Their tour partners praised The Three Out, with Teddy Wilson calling them “one of the best jazz trios I’ve heard”, and Dakota Staton said of Freddy Logan, “Logan is exceptional. I would like to see him come to America where there is great demand for players of his calibre.”
Following the tour, Gene McDaniels stayed in Australia, sharing a house with Chris Karan, and he would occasionally join The Three Out at El Rocco. Nancy Wilson also sat in with the band as singer around this time too, and as the new year arrived, The Three Out set aside time to record their second album with some of their friends.
Sittin In was recorded May 2nd, 3rd, and 10th 1961, and featured guests Errol Buddle, Don Burrows, Ron Falson, and Colin Jones sitting in with the trio on the album’s B-side. It was released in December 1961.
While he hadn’t been a fan of their debut, Mike Nock felt his playing on Sittin In had improved as his style matured. “The second album was played much better,” he said. “I played much better, and I think the band was probably a better band. But it lacked the excitement, the real visceral excitement, that the first album had. Some of those things are almost unlistenable to me, but some of them are really good.”
Across Australia, The Three Out were hailed as “Sydney’s most popular cool jazz group” and “the best contemporary jazz group in Australia”, and after visiting Melbourne for an appearance at the Moomba festival, the group left the country for a short tour of New Zealand. Arriving on 17 April 1961, they brought with them Australian singer Paula Langlands, who still recalls the tour well.
“It was only Christchurch and Auckland, with a recording session for NZ’s equivalent of our ABC, but there was only time to record two songs. We were all good friends. Freddy was a first call bassist in Sydney at that time, quite liked generally but yes, perhaps a little quiet. Terri King said she was in love with him and I must confess to a bit of a crush too.”
At the time there was talk in the press of The Three Out touring the US, and Mike Nock was certainly still looking for his ticket over there. Earlier, Mike had made a recording of four songs during a radio session with Rick Laird (bass) and Chris Karan, and sent them to American music magazine Down Beat as entry to their annual scholarship program. Then in June 1961, they announced Mike Nock would receive their Hall of Fame Scholarship, including $200 and study at the Berklee School of Music in Boston.
With the news of Nock’s scholarship, The Three Out left Australia on a three-month European tour after Freddy Logan organised for the group to perform on a boat to England in exchange for their tickets. In England, Freddy once again stepped into the role of manager as he set about securing them gigs, and The Three Out made their London debut at Ronnie Scott’s club in July, as reported by English jazz magazine Jazz News who called them “a top Australian modern jazz trio”. The magazine also noted EMI in the UK were hoping to release Move later that year, but a technical hitch could delay their plans.
“Unfortunately, we weren’t represented very well before we left [for England],” Chris Karan said. “Because we were hoping to do some work in Europe and in London with the group, but the albums weren’t released in England. Nobody had heard of The Three Out so we just did a few gigs.”
“Freddy had all these connections in England,” Mike Nock said. “He had these connections with a company called the Harold Davidson Agency who were quite big and he managed to get us a little tour of the continent, so we went straight from London to a brief tour of Europe.”
Following their brief European tour, which included a date in Freddy’s hometown in the Netherlands, Mike Nock left for Boston and Chris and Freddy joined with an American pianist to continue working as a trio. “It might have been Brian Lemon,” Chris Karan said. “But it didn’t last long because at that time I met up with Dudley anyway.”
“Dudley” was the British musician and actor Dudley Moore, who Freddy introduced Chris to when he needed a drummer. After sitting in with him for one night Chris then spent several years touring the world as part of the Dudley Moore Trio.
Freddy remained in England as he had a British passport by now and was living in the Bayswater area for a time with Scottish trumpeter Jimmy Deuchar. He was once again busy sitting in on sessions with various artists, including BBC sessions with Tubby Hayes, Marian McPartland, Mark Murphy, Stan Tracey, and Dakota Staton. For a December 1965 session with Staton the band was billed as The Freddy Logan Quintet, and Freddy lent his name to various trios, quartets, quintets, and sextets who each performed on BBC Radio during the 60s.
Australian pianist Ted Nettelbeck spent some time with him in England and the two stayed in touch for several years after Ted returned to Australia, but eventually lost contact. Years later Ted recounted some of his memories of Freddy Logan to Eric Myers, telling him, “He was invariably cheerful, laughed a lot, very easygoing, easy to talk to and very kind. I never heard him put anyone down. We only ever talked about music, about which he was passionate and thought a lot.”
After touring and recording with Tubby Hayes for several years, Freddy led his own quartet at London’s Rhinegold Club in the early 70s, before taking a trio to The New Bogart’s restaurant in 1981, and then back with a quartet at the Colony Room Restaurant starting in 1983. That year, in October 1983, Freddy married Catherine Kelly in Cambridgeshire where she had been born in 1957.
There is very little information available about Freddy’s life after he remarried. He continued playing at the Colony Room Restaurant into 1984, but then his name disappears from the press and everyone I spoke to had lost touch with him before then.
He lived in Cambridgeshire with his wife until May 2003 when he died from cancer aged 73. Since then, Freddy Logan has been written about occasionally, such as in biographies of Tubby Hayes, Pia Beck, and Mike Nock. But still, his later life has remained unknown up until his death, and many of his early recordings were only available through second hand stores through much of his life.
By then, The Three Out albums were long out of print, and Mike Nock recalls seeing their first album Move selling for US$3,000 in Japan during the early 2000s. In 2015, both albums were remastered for vinyl and CD and reissued by German label BE! Jazz, and continue to circulate on second hand markets, though they have yet to appear on streaming services.
Other albums featuring Freddy Logan are available, such as the two from The Australian All Stars (often under their US title Jazz For Surf-niks) or his numerous contributions with Tubby Hayes. Chris Karan and Mike Nock are also represented well by their many decades of work, with Chris on albums by Dudley Moore, Serge Gainsbourg, and The Yardbirds, while Mike can be heard in his jazz fusion group The Fourth Way, several solo albums, and the recently released Another Dance with Hamish Stuart, Julien Wilson, and Jonathan Zwartz. •
Do you have any information or memories about Freddy Logan? We’d like to collect any further information into an expanded version of this article to be published next year. Leave a comment or email us at editor@theshadowknows.com.au with anything you think could help.
This article was originally published in The Shadow Knows Issue #3, July 2022. Buy the fanzine here or read more at our website.
The following errors have been corrected post-publication: cymbals was misspelled symbols, Graeme Bennet was incorrectly written Graeme Benny, Sky Lounge was written Skylounge in one instance, and Ted Nettelbeck’s surname was mispelled.
Update 18 August 2022: Chris Karan clarified that the advertisement for the festival in The Sydney Morning Herald (8 Oct 1960) listed Jimmy Rushing in error. It should have listed Gene McDaniels. Thanks Chris!
Update 17 September 2022: Wilmus Reeves’ name corrected from incorrect Willmus Revis. Thanks again to Chris Karan for noting this typo.
Update 25 September 2022: Chris Karan further clarified that he’d known Mike Nock prior to them playing together at The Embers. Previously this article stated they had met at The Embers. Chris Karan also noted that he played with Rick Laird and Barbara Virgil again in Rome in the early 60s. Rick Laird died in 2021 aged 80.
