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Stanley Cowell – born in Toledo, Ohio on May 5, 1941 – was a jazz pianist who helped found Strata-East Records. Cowell began playing piano at the age of four and was inspired to pursue jazz when he saw Art Tatum, a family friend, play live. After high school, he began studying at Oberlin College, then went to the University of Michigan, earning a graduate degree in classical piano. Relocating to New York, Cowell played with jazz greats like Marion Brown, Bobby Hutcherson, Jack DeJohnette, Harold Land, Sonny Rollins and Stan Getz. He joined the Max Roach Quintet, where he met trumpeter Charles Tolliver and performed at the Newport Jazz Festival in 1967. Cowell traveled Europe in 1969, performing with Jean-Luc Ponty, Jean-François Jenny- Clark and Bernard Lubat in Paris. He recorded three albums in London including Blues for the Viet Cong (1969), his first as leader. After moving back to New York and recording Brilliant Circles (1969), Cowell and Tolliver founded the Strata-East label in 1971, one of the most important and influential independent African-American record labels. He began to release his own albums on the label including Handscapes (1972), Musa: Ancestral Streams (1973), Handscapes 2 (1974), and Regeneration (1975). The label also released albums by Billy Harper, Gil Scott-Heron & Brian Jackson, Sonny Fortune, Weldon Irvine, Cecil Payne, The Heath Brothers and many others. Playing the piano, synthesizer, clavinet or thumb piano, Cowell recorded solo or in groups for the Galaxy and Concord Jazz labels. He also accompanied Art Pepper, Arthur Blythe, J.J. Johnson, and others. In addition to trio sessions for the Danish label SteepleChase, Cowell developed jazz standards on his solo releases and performed with the Charles Tolliver Big Band. His 2015 solo album Juneteenth celebrated the 150th anniversary of the abolition of slavery in the United States. Stanley Cowell died on December 17, 2020 at the age of 79.
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