Strata-East’s independence was not initially born out of choice. Charles Tolliver and Stanley Cowell had appeared on some of the great jazz sessions of the 1960s. A year after both playing on Max Roach’s Members, Don’t Git Weary they formed Music Inc., and released the LP The Ringer (under the name Charles Tolliver and Music Inc.) on Polydor in 1969. But by the time they had finished recording their next LP, jazz was losing its commercial pull. When they took the material to the majors at the start of the ’70s they were met with indifference. “Our surprise at not being able to place the freshly recorded tapes with a major company for a sufficient advance morphed into our determination to self-produce it,” explains Stanley Cowell. “The ’60s Black Power movement in the United States had an effect on many black artists toward self-reliance, entrepreneurship and self-determination.”
At the time, one such group of artists was operating out of Detroit under the name Strata. Cowell and Tolliver were so inspired by this grassroots collective they began to work on plans for a similar operation in New York. “Kenny Cox and Charles Moore came to New York with their papers for Strata Corp. and inspired us to form a corporation,” recalls Cowell. “Strata-East, Inc. would be part of a larger artist-controlled concept. As we saw the potential for our catalogue to expand more rapidly, we decided to form Strata-East Records, Inc.” And so the label was born at the start of 1971 with the Music Inc. Big Band LP. .
