Stanley Cowell & The Piano Choir

Brilliant, unprecedented pianism from the Strata-East co-founder

Stanley Cowell, circa 1970s

More than 30 titles from the Strata-East label have recently been remastered and reissued on streaming services and digital platforms, most notably Bandcamp. Several have also been reissued in physical form, on LP and CD. Many Strata-East titles have been licensed for reissue over the years, but a reissue campaign this comprehensive has never before been undertaken.

When I heard that the catalog was being revived, there were two titles in particular that I was very much hoping to see made available, and when the day came, there they were. Those two releases, and one other, are the subject of this newsletter.

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Strata-East was founded by pianist Stanley Cowell and trumpeter Charles Tolliver. They released their own music, together and separately (Cowell was part of Tolliver’s Music Inc. quartet), and also allowed a wide range of artists including Pharoah Sanders, Charlie Rouse, Cecil McBee, John Hicks, Clifford Jordan, Billy Harper and others to put out challenging and even visionary work.

Cowell was an extremely creative and innovative pianist. He grew up in Ohio, studied at Oberlin (where he studied classical piano, but also got the opportunity to play with Rahsaan Roland Kirk) and received a graduate degree from the University of Michigan before moving to New York. He got early breaks playing on saxophonist Marion Brown’s Three For Shepp and Why Not? and drummer Max Roach’s Members, Don’t Git Weary, and was part of several of vibraphonist Bobby Hutcherson’s sessions for Blue Note, though most of that music stayed in the vault until the late ’70s. He began working with Tolliver while they were both in Roach’s band, and they started Strata-East together two years later.

I interviewed Tolliver in 2017, and he told me how his background shaped his musical approach. He said Toledo was “like a musical suburb of Detroit, except we’re more rock ’n’ roll oriented. At least, that’s what I used to joke about… that’s what the Detroit musicians accused me of playing when I sat in with a number of their stellar players when I was in high school.” He added, “I’ve always had this kind of R&B appreciation instead of a straight hard bop, straight post-bop thing. And like I say, I’m from Toledo, and there’s that, and then there’s the Art Tatum influence.” (Tatum was a family friend and a strong early influence on Cowell.)

Cowell’s Musa - Ancestral Streams was released in early 1974. It was his fourth release as a leader; he had previously made Blues For The Viet Cong and Brilliant Circles for the Freedom label and Illusion Suite for ECM. But Blues… and Illusion Suite were both trio discs (with Steve Novosel and Stanley Clarke, respectively, on bass; Jimmy Hopps was the drummer on both) and Brilliant Circles featured a sextet that included Woody Shaw on trumpet, Tyrone Washington on tenor sax and flute, Bobby Hutcherson on vibes, Reggie Workman on bass, and Joe Chambers on drums. Musa was a solo piano album.

The original version of Musa contained nine tracks and ran about 38 minutes. The new digital reissue adds four tracks, for about 19 minutes of additional material.

The pieces on Musa have a clear structure, and a strong groove despite the absence of any traditional rhythm instruments. These are compositions, with powerful, hooky melodies, and Cowell’s extrapolations, especially on pieces like the opening “Abscretions” and “Departure No. 1”, are breathtaking at times. The two “Departure” pieces feel like the clearest nod to Tatum, the notes falling like diamonds poured from a bag. But there are also pieces like “Maimoun” and “Travelin’ Man” that sit closer to the spiritual jazz of Alice Coltrane; on the latter piece, Cowell switches to organ and overdubs kalimba. The album’s subtitle, Ancestral Streams, is extremely fitting. This is a solo piano album as manifesto, Stanley Cowell showing you where he came from (sometimes explicitly — there’s a piece dedicated to his classical piano instructor at Oberlin, “Emil Danenberg”) and where he might be going.

The year before, Cowell had released an even wilder record — Handscapes, the debut of an ensemble dubbed the Piano Choir. Although he’s credited as leader, he told me that the idea for the group came from another pianist. “Actually… it was Larry Willis’s idea. I think the name might be my idea. And, you know, it kind of coalesced, an ensemble coalesced together over time of just rehearsing with no gigs in mind at Steinway and sometimes at Baldwin Music Facilities here in New York, and then back at Steinway.”

On Handscapes, the Piano Choir consisted of Cowell, Nat Jones, Hugh Lawson, Webster Lewis, Harold Mabern, Danny Mixon, and Sonelius Smith, all collectively credited with “piano, electric piano, vocals, percussion, African piano, harpsichord.” The double LP, recorded live in June and October 1972, ran an hour and 45 minutes and featured six original pieces — two by Cowell, and one each by Lawson, Smith, Lewis and Mixon — plus versions of Thelonious Monk’s “Straight, No Chaser”, Thomas Dorsey’s “Precious Lord”, and Joe Chambers’ “The Almoravids”.

“Well, the hit, the one that everybody likes is ‘Jaboobee’s March’”, Cowell told me. “It’s got a beat, you know, and a pattern that a lot of people relate to. Non-musicians, I guess, maybe more than musicians.” That piece, which opens the double LP, is indeed tremendous: a gospelized vamp with multiple pianists pounding out the chords and melody as other members of the ensemble use shakers, wood blocks and tambourines to raise the energy level even higher.

The version of “Straight, No Chaser” that follows is thrilling, too, because it’s treated as a showpiece for the entire ensemble, with one keyboardist playing a short passage that will then be responded to or countered by another on the other side of the stage. There must have been a strong visual element to the performance, because the audience can be heard laughing joyfully at multiple moments throughout, and the applause at the end is thunderous.

Cowell told me, “‘Straight, No Chaser’ was special because of the ‘moving sound’ effect that you almost conceivably could hear even in that stereo recording of the solos moving around the room as the different pianists in succession took twelves, eights, or fours, and twos, and then ones, and then it just went out there. And, you know, that was usually a great show-closer.”

The centerpiece of the album, though, is the 31-minute “Man Extensions”, which originally took up its third side. The sequence of solos runs Cowell, Lawson, Mabern, Lewis, Smith, Jones, Mixon, with Lewis heard on organ and Mixon on piano and harpsichord. The performance is stunning, because it’s meant to be. When you hear it, you understand why this group was called the Piano Choir, because it has the intensity of a religious revival, and when Lewis takes his organ solo, the walls shake (and the audience erupts). One note: There’s an obvious edit before Mixon’s harpsichord solo starts. I don’t know whether it was for technical reasons (harpsichords are finicky instruments) or because the piano solo wound down in a way he didn’t like, but it’s jarring.

Handscapes is one of the most incredible records I’ve ever heard. Buy it, and play it loud.

Unsurprisingly, there was a sequel. Handscapes 2 was a studio album, recorded between August and December 1974, with a slightly different lineup: Mixon was out, replaced by Ron Burton, and three percussionists — Mtume, John Lewis, and Jimmy Hopps — were also present on certain tracks.

It’s a much shorter record, just five tracks in 33 minutes, and the gospel/rave-up element is pushed aside in favor of funk vamps and heavy doses of synth and electric piano. The opening “Ballad for the Beast from Bali-Bali”, written by Webster Lewis, features Cowell creating theremin-like swoops and squeals on a synth as Hugh Lawson does most of the piano work and a tambourine shakes in the background. It has an almost African funk groove, and reminds me of Alice Coltrane’s mid ’70s work (after she’d left Impulse! for Warner Bros.) or maybe William Onyeabor.

In general, all five tracks on Handscapes 2 are more synth-heavy and polished than the pounding live tracks on the first volume. This is a slick studio album, and the sonic layering is key to the arrangements — a primary acoustic piano line will be complemented by proggy synth, but there will also be a gospel-ish organ lurking in the mix, and a Mellotron or something similar will be deployed to create string-like effects. The remaining four compositions are by Sonelius Smith (“The Need to Smile”), Webster Lewis again (“Barbara Ann”), Harold Mabern (“In What Direction are You Headed”), and Cowell (“Prayer for Peace”). It’s worth noting that the latter two are not exclusive to this album — Mabern’s tune was first recorded on trumpeter Lee Morgan’s final studio album in 1971, and Cowell returned to “Prayer for Peace” many times; it’s also on Musa - Ancestral Streams. The version here features a pulsing organ line and more Mellotron, used to create a flute-like sound, as well as a somewhat herky-jerky tambourine rhythm.

(If you want to hear another version of “The Need to Smile”, check out the Wildflowers: The New York Loft Jazz Sessions compilation, where it’s performed by a group called Flight To Sanity that included Sonelius Smith, trumpeter Olu Dara, tenor saxophonist Byard Lancaster, soprano saxophonist Art Bennett, bassist Benny Wilson, drummer Harold Smith, and Famoudou Don Moye on congas.)

Each of these albums is very different from the others, but they’re all amazing in their own way. Stanley Cowell was a brilliant pianist and composer whose work both on record and through co-founding Strata-East had a major impact on jazz in the Seventies. He also spent many years as an educator at Rutgers University, mentoring subsequent generations of players. Musa - Ancestral Streams, Handscapes and Handscapes 2 are all worth any engaged listener’s time.

That’s it for today. On Friday, we’ll be talking about a new book by pianist (and sometime music critic) Matthew Shipp.