Montreux Jazz Festival Archives

Routes: A Jazz Impressions Podcast – Episode 8

We’re back! After a busy period of new jobs, new musical projects and new strains of Covid, we reconnect and rejoin the dots between two more of our favourite tracks. In this episode, we pay tribute to the late, great MF Doom, the metal-faced enigma we lost on Halloween 2020. But what connects the supervillain to ‘70s funk supremos the Ohio Players? What’s Cole Porter got to do with Giorgio Moroder? And where does an Anglo-Trakehner stallion fit into all this? Get your Gazzillion Ears round episode 8 to find out.

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Tracklists below (SPOILERS!)

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.

The Ahmad Jamal Trio – Bogota

Immediately following The Awakening, the great Ahmad Jamal moves to Rhodes -as in the electric piano, not the place. The location is the Montreux Jazz Festival, and the 1972 release Outertimeinnerspace is another perfect album; arguably an easier achievement with only two tracks (further performances from this date appear on Freeflight, also on Impulse!), each comprising an entire side of the LP.