Strata-East Records

Strata-East Records is an American record label specialising in jazz which was founded in 1971 by Charles Tolliver and Stanley Cowell with the release of their first recording Music Inc. The label released over 50 albums in the 1970s. Many of the label's releases are now hailed as prime examples of 1970s Post-Bop, Spiritual Jazz, and Afro-Jazz.

Gil Scott-Heron recorded his 1974 album Winter in America with Brian Jackson for Strata-East. "The Bottle" featured on the album, was a popular single. This album stands as one of the label's most well-known recordings.

Clifford Jordan and Bill Lee, father of Spike Lee, were involved in numerous releases.

Discography

SES Series

SECD Series

Stanley Cowell

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Stanley Cowell (born May 5, 1941 in Toledo, Ohio) is an American jazz pianist and co-founder of the Strata-East Records label. He played with Roland Kirk while studying at the Oberlin Conservatory of Music, and later with Marion Brown, Max Roach, Bobby Hutcherson, Clifford Jordan, Harold Land, Sonny Rollins and Stan Getz. Cowell played with trumpeter Charles Moore and others in the Detroit Artist's Workshop Jazz Ensemble in 1965-66. During the late 1980s Cowell was part of a regular quartet led by J.J. Johnson. Cowell teaches in the Music Department of the Mason Gross School of the Arts at Rutgers, the State University of New Jersey.

Discography

As leader

Charles Tolliver

Charles Tolliver (born March 6, 1942) is an American jazz trumpeter and composer.

Biography

Tolliver was born in Jacksonville, Florida, where, as a child, he received his first trumpet as a gift from his grandmother. He attended Howard University in the early 1960s as a pharmacy student, when he decided to pursue music as a career and moved to New York City. He came to prominence in 1964, playing and recording on Jackie McLean's Blue Note albums. In 1971, Tolliver and Stanley Cowell founded Strata-East Records, one of the pioneer artist-owned jazz record labels. Tolliver himself released many albums and collaborations on Strata. Following a long hiatus, he reemerged in the late 2000s, releasing two albums arranged for big band. With Love was nominated in 2007 for a Grammy award for Best Large Jazz Ensemble.

He would later describe his experience: "There was so much going on with the music. Like with bebop, we had a long period of just salivating on. There were all these different idioms within a genre, the avant-garde and free music, bebop still, and of course the music of John Coltrane and Miles. It was just a hell of a period. And then there was also the political scene going on...."