Music Monday: Strata-East
I’m not a particular fan of anthologies and things like that, but I’ve very much enjoyed the Strata-East anthology released on Friday: The Legacy Begins.
Of course, I recognize that it is over 4 hours of music, so I don’t blame you if you don’t listen to it all straight through. I’ll offer a few highlights though.
First, I love Smilin’ Bill Suite, Part II from The Heath Brothers feat. Stanley Cowell’s Marchin’ On (1976). Cowell is a founder of Strata-East and this nice piece from NPR’s now defunct A Blog Supreme reminds us that Part II is sampled by Nas on “One Love” from Illmatic. Here’s the entire album:
I was also pretty enamored with the Harold Vick track, “Don’t Look Back” off the album of the same name from 1974. It’s high quality soul jazz. Here’s the album:
It’s hardly surprising that the anthology includes a good bit Charles Tolliver and Music Inc. as he and Cowell co-founded Strata-East in 1971 with the album Music Inc. It’s a fantastic album, one of my long time favorite examples of 1970s large ensemble jazz:
Finally, there is this quirky spiritual jazz (albeit on the light side), Shamek Farrah and Sonelius Smith’s “The World of the Children” which appeared on the eponymous album in 1977. I can’t find the full album on YouTube or even any of the major streaming sites, but, I can find the track which is a fun listen from an otherwise obscure musician.
One final observation, I listened to the anthology streaming on Tidal. It was a bit odd that the tracks were at different resolutions. Is this a normal thing?
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