jazz-rock Archives - Page 2 of 2

Miles Davis – Bitches Brew

Who better to lead us into the weird world of Miles Davis than his biographer, Ian Carr? We heard his electric Miles-inspired jazz-rock on ‘Torrid Zone’, and Bitches Brew (1970) is more or less fusion ground zero. Influenced by the music of Jimi Hendrix – and pissed off that rock stars were making more money than him without the musical ability – Davis mixed the aggression of rock with the most experimental aspects of jazz to create an album that sounded like neither genre, producing something closer to alien funk.

Nucleus – Torrid Zone

The year before The Ahmad Jamal Trio performed their composition ‘Bogota’ at the Montreux Jazz Festival in Switzerland, a small group of British musicians by the name of Nucleus showcased compositions which pioneered a new sound, one that blended jazz with influences from rock and funk, now defined as ‘jazz-rock’ or ‘fusion’. This radical new approach to jazz saw the group win first prize at the festival and was responsible, along with a few other notable albums, in ushering jazz away from the modal and post-bop sounds of the 60s and into the psychedelic, funky fusion of the 70s.