Two independent labels started in 1971 with the same basic idea: that musicians should own their own recordings. Their catalogues have become some of the most collected in jazz. This is a guide to both.
By the end of the 1960s the major labels were losing interest in jazz. Contracts were harder to get, advances were smaller, and the music that musicians actually wanted to make — longer, freer, more explicitly political — was exactly what a commercial A&R department would not fund.
The response was to build alternatives. Strata-East in New York and Black Jazz Records in Los Angeles were the two that mattered most, and both were founded in 1971.
Neither sold in significant numbers at the time. Both have been reissued repeatedly since, and original pressings now change hands for serious money.
Strata-East
Founded by trumpeter Charles Tolliver and pianist Stanley Cowell, Strata-East ran on an unusual model: artists retained the rights to their own recordings and the label handled distribution, taking a share rather than owning the masters.
That arrangement is why the catalogue is so varied. There was no house sound, because there was no A&R department imposing one.
Charles Tolliver / Music Inc. — Live at Slugs’ (1972)
Live at Slugs’ captures the Tolliver quartet at the Lower East Side club where Lee Morgan was shot, and it is the label’s founding statement.
Tolliver’s trumpet playing is ferocious, and the band — with Cowell, Cecil McBee and Jimmy Hopps — plays with an intensity the studio never quite caught.
Gil Scott-Heron & Brian Jackson — Winter in America (1974)
Winter in America is the best-known album Strata-East released and the one that carried the label beyond jazz audiences.
“The Bottle” became a hit. The record sits between jazz, soul and spoken word, and Brian Jackson’s Rhodes and flute playing is as important to it as Scott-Heron’s voice.
Clifford Jordan — Glass Bead Games (1974)
Glass Bead Games is frequently named as the finest album in the catalogue, a double LP of spiritual-leaning modal jazz.
Jordan was a Chicago tenor player who had worked with Charles Mingus and Horace Silver. Cedar Walton, Stanley Cowell and Billy Higgins all appear.
Pharoah Sanders — Izipho Zam (My Gifts) (1973)
Izipho Zam was recorded in 1969 and sat unreleased for four years before Strata-East put it out.
Sonny Sharrock is on guitar and Leon Thomas sings. The title track runs past twenty minutes.
Billy Harper — Capra Black (1973)
Capra Black is the tenor saxophone record of the catalogue, built on gospel phrasing and a huge sound.
Harper had played with Art Blakey and Gil Evans. The album has been sampled repeatedly in hip-hop, which is how a good deal of its current audience arrived.
The Piano Choir — Handscapes (1973)
Handscapes is seven pianists playing together, which is exactly as unusual as it sounds.
Organised by Stanley Cowell, with Harold Mabern, Hugh Lawson, Danny Mixon, Sonelius Smith, Webster Lewis and Nat Jones. A genuinely odd record and an argument that the label would release things nobody else would.
Black Jazz Records
Founded in Los Angeles by the pianist Gene Russell with backing from Dick Schory, Black Jazz released around twenty albums between 1971 and 1976.
The remit was narrower than Strata-East’s and the house identity much stronger — the sleeves are instantly recognisable, and the music consistently sits between spiritual jazz, soul and early fusion.
Doug Carn — Infant Eyes (1971)
Infant Eyes is the album most people mean when they talk about Black Jazz, setting lyrics by Jean Carn to instrumental jazz compositions.
The pieces come from Wayne Shorter, McCoy Tyner and others, with words written on top. Jean Carn’s voice is the reason the record works.
Doug and Jean Carn made three more albums for the label, all worth having.
Gene Russell — New Direction (1971)
New Direction was the label’s first release, made by its founder.
A piano trio record, more straightforwardly soulful than most of what followed, and useful for hearing where the label started before its identity hardened.
Walter Bishop Jr. — Coral Keys (1971)
Coral Keys is the most elegant record in the catalogue, from a bebop pianist who had played with Charlie Parker.
The title track is the one that gets played, and the album demonstrates how wide the label’s remit actually was.
The Awakening — Hear, Sense and Feel (1972)
The Awakening were a Chicago group with AACM connections, and this is the most adventurous record Black Jazz released.
Closer to the Art Ensemble than to soul jazz in places, and the strongest argument that the label was not simply chasing a groove.
Henry Franklin — The Skipper (1972)
The Skipper is a bassist-led album and one of the most sought-after original pressings in the catalogue.
Franklin had played with Hugh Masekela and Freddie Hubbard, and the record has a loose, unhurried quality that separates it from the label’s tighter productions.
Calvin Keys — Shawn-Neeq (1971)
Shawn-Neeq is the guitar record, and it has been mined heavily by producers.
Keys came out of the organ-trio circuit and brought that feel to a label otherwise pointed in a different direction.
Why both labels matter now
Three reasons.
The first is ownership. Both operations were attempts to solve a structural problem — that Black musicians had historically made records they did not own — and Strata-East’s artist retained-rights model in particular was well ahead of its time.
The second is the music itself. The spiritual jazz revival of the last two decades has been built substantially on these catalogues, and a good proportion of what is now treated as canonical was commercially invisible for thirty years.
The third is sampling. Producers found these records in the 1990s, which created a second audience with no connection to the first.
Where to go next
Reissues have made both catalogues accessible. Real Gone Music has worked through much of Black Jazz, and Strata-East material has appeared through various licensing arrangements, though availability is less consistent.
There is also a third label worth knowing: Strata Records in Detroit, a separate operation with a similar philosophy, whose catalogue — including Kenny Cox’s recordings — has been reissued in recent years.
From there, the thread runs directly to the modern independents doing the same job, International Anthem chief among them.
Which Strata-East or Black Jazz record do you rate highest? Let us know in the comments below.
More guides to albums, labels and jazz history in the Jazzfuel archive — or sign up for the Weekend Edition newsletter for a jazz reading list every Saturday.
