Aretha Franklin

How Claude Nobs brought the Americans over

At the turn of the 1970s, a three-year-old Swiss festival had no obvious claim on the stars of the Atlantic label. Claude Nobs got there by going to fetch them himself: he travelled to New York, met Nesuhi Ertegün, the head of Atlantic, and persuaded the label to send its artists to the shores of Lake Geneva.

It was through that channel that Roberta Flack, and then Aretha Franklin, discovered Montreux. Nobs happily recounted his host’s methods (the invitation to his home, the fondue, the Swiss chocolate offered to artists) which did as much for the festival’s reputation as the fees.

The last concert with King Curtis

On 12 June 1971, Aretha Franklin took the stage at the Casino de Montreux. She was backed by King Curtis and the Kingpins, the band of the saxophonist who was then leading her touring outfit.

That concert would stand as Aretha Franklin’s last live performance with King Curtis. On 13 August 1971, two months later, the saxophonist was stabbed outside his building in New York. He was thirty-seven.

That evening’s set mixed her big hits with covers of the moment, among them Diana Ross’s “Reach Out and Touch (Somebody’s Hand)” and Simon and Garfunkel’s “Bridge Over Troubled Water”.

A hall that was about to disappear

The concert took place in the original Montreux Casino, the one that burned down on 4 December 1971, less than six months later, during Frank Zappa’s concert. Aretha Franklin is thus among the last great names to have sung in that hall.

Her bust, sculpted by Marco Zeno and given by Barbara J. Riley to Claude Nobs, now stands in the garden of the Montreux Palace, among those of the artists Nobs had brought to town. The first woman inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, she remains one of the most influential voices of the twentieth century.