Label guide

Strata Records

In a Detroit still clearing the rubble of 1967, a pianist built a label, a concert gallery and a community organization - and pressed "The Sound of Detroit" into every sleeve.

The short version

Kenny Cox was a Detroit pianist with two Blue Note albums to his name as leader of the Contemporary Jazz Quintet. Frustrated by a label that wanted a more traditional, more sellable music, he walked away and founded Strata in 1969. It began as a community organization - food drives and jazz programs where government funding had disappeared - and grew into a label, a recording studio and the Strata Concert Gallery at 46 West Selden Avenue. When Miles Davis or Charles Mingus came to town, Strata recorded the shows and broadcast them on the radio for the people who could not afford a ticket.

Michigan artists Herb Boyd and John Sinclair designed the sleeves in-house: raw black-and-white covers with a proto-punk DIY look, every one stamped with the same tagline - "The Sound of Detroit."

Saturday Night Special (1975) album cover: Strata Records; shown here for commentary on the label, copyrights remain with the label.

Who to hear

Lyman Woodard Organization. Saturday Night Special (1975). A sweeping organ-led jazz-funk epic, and the label's last release - its back cover advertised four forthcoming records that never came.
Kenny Cox. Clap Clap! The Joyful Noise. The founder's own session.
Sphere. Inside Ourselves (1974).
Maulawi. Maulawi (1974), from the saxophonist and bandleader Maulawi Nururdin.
Contemporary Jazz Quintet. Location and The Black Hole, Cox's working band on its own turf.

Six records from thirty tapes

Money was never the engine. Like Tribe across town, the Black Artists Group in St. Louis and the AACM in Chicago, Strata treated artistic independence as a political statement, outside the usual industry structures. It closed in 1975 after failing to secure a loan, having released just six records from more than 30 master tapes. Most of what Strata recorded was never heard.

The afterlife

DJ and collector Amir Abdullah found the label through a copy of Saturday Night Special and reissued it on Wax Poetics in 2009. In 2011 he founded 180 Proof Records, and in 2012 he met Kenny Cox's widow Barbara - the founder died in 2008 - who held the master tapes and agreed to let him bring the catalog back. In 2018 came the find: Jazz in Detroit / Strata Concert Gallery / 46 Selden, a previously unreleased Charles Mingus concert recorded at Strata's own room in 1973, one of the great live records of Mingus's late years.

Jazz in Detroit / Strata Concert Gallery / 46 Selden (recorded 1973, released 2018) album cover: Strata Records; shown here for commentary on the recording, copyrights remain with the label.

Watch

Our full documentary on the label:

Where to start

Start with Saturday Night Special, then the Mingus box. The compilations in 180 Proof's DJ Amir Presents Strata Records: The Sound of Detroit series survey the rest, from Kenny Cox's Afro-Latin groover "Beyond The Dream" to Ursula Walker's take on Herbie Hancock's "Maiden Voyage."

Why it matters

Strata recorded its city when nobody else would, on its own terms, for its own neighbors. The catalog is small; the idea was large.

Sources

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