Any jazz lover knows that jazz has soul – and this new show had more more Strata-East Records tunes as proof – but perhaps there is less recognition that much soul (from its roots through to contemporary R’n’B) has strong jazz links. We’ll take you on that journey and add in some brand-new as yet unreleased jazz for you. The image below comes from the excellent London Jazz Collector site – it’s the currently most valuable original Strata-East pressings with Max Roach’s M’Boom outfit peaking the list at around 2000 USD for a first pressing! Neil has four of the six – but they’re all reissues!
1. Larry Ridley – Changa Chikayo from Soul Jazz Records Love Strata-East/Sum of the Parts
In the last show Neil played some selections from the groundbreaking Strata-East Records to celebrate the release of Strata East – The Legacy Begins. Derek continued the label celebration, but included a tune not on the recent download compilation. British label Soul Jazz Records recognised the importance of Strata-East back in 1994 when they released a double vinyl simply called Strata-East – a record in Derek’s collection with many plays over the years and a well-worn sleeve as evidence. One copy is still available from Soul Brother Records (in CD format) for £25. This great compilation includes Changa Chikaya from bass player Larry Ridley, originally released on the album Sum of the Parts in 1975. The tune moves at some pace but has a feeling of restrained sweetness, with features for Sonny Fortune on flute, Errol ‘Crusher’ Bennett on congas and Onaje Allan Gumbs on electric piano. Grady Tate on drums and Cornell Dupree on guitar make up the rest of band. Larry Ridley has not had a large output as a leader but has acted as a sideman to many leading jazz musicians. He was the bass player for Thelonious Monk from 1970-73, and other associations include Max Roach, Lee Morgan, Jackie McLean, Horace Silver, Sonny Rollins and Philly Joe Jones. He’s also been a jazz educator as head of the jazz department at Rutgers University, New Jersey.
2. Charles Tolliver – On the Nile from Strata-East – The Legacy Begins/The Ringer
This tune features on the new download Strata-East compilation and is from Charles Tolliver, trumpeter and co-founder in 1971 of the label which was set up by and run by Black American jazz musicians. It was a strong statement of self-determination, independence and political consciousness and that sense is present on this tune. Released originally on the album The Ringer, Tolliver’s label co-founder Stanley Cowell is on piano, with Steve Novosel on bass and Jimmy Hopps on drums. Tolliver has a spellbinding solo as he reaches higher and higher in a search for the sublime. His tone is full and rich – and unique. This is undeniably jazz with soul, jazz with spiritualty, jazz with meaning and consciousness with Black American musicians acknowledging and paying respects to the mighty River Nile on the African continent. As with Larry Ridley, is Tolliver himself under-rated and less well-known than he should be? On the evidence of this tune alone, the answer to both questions is yes.
3. Stanley Cowell – Travelin’ Man from Mastercuts Jazz Café/Blues for the Viet Cong (AKA Travellin’ Man)
Stanley Cowell himself appropriately follows. Charles Tolliver. That consciousness, soul and spirituality is here too – I’m a travellin’ man, trying to understand what’s going on… please don’t take advantage of me sings Stanley Cowell. As well as piano, Cowell plays thumb piano, derived from the Zimbabwean mbira. Steve Novosel and Jimmy Hopps are here too but this record actually pre-dates Strata-East being released in 1969 on Black Lion Records. The tune found itself on a London release from 2006, which is where Derek came across it – a 3-CD set entitled MC (Mastercuts) Jazz Café and described as 3 CDs of Jazz Café Vibes. There are plenty of Cosmic Jazz favourites on the compilation and other Strata-East artists are on there too – Tolliver with On The Nile and The Heath Brothers and Charlie Rouse with tunes Neil selected for the last show.
4. The Circling Sun – Mizu from Orbits
This one also featured on the last show but was not played to its full effect and so to put that rightit gets a second play. However, it’s easily good enough to deserve another hearing. Orbits is the second LP from New Zealand/Aotearoa group The Circling Sun, and it channels the cosmic energy of 1970s spiritual jazz, filtered through synths, layered percussion, and an eight piece choir of Maori and Pacific Island singers. They’re all part of a very healthy Auckland jazz scene and this new album (out next month) references an even broader palette than their first record, Spirits, which we have also featured on CJ. The Circling Sun are a collective and the personnel on this album includes Cameron Allen on tenor and alto saxes, John Bell on cornet and tenor horn, Guy Harrison on synths and Julien Dyne on drums and percussion.
5. Wojtek Mazolewski Quintet – The Art Of Joy from Live Spirit 1
We have featured Polish bassist and composer Wojtek Masolewski before on Cosmic Jazz and we’re pleased to feature him again with his Quintet on the newly-released Live Spirit 1, recorded live in a Prague concert studio and released on 25 July 2025. Wojtek Masolewski has played hundreds of shows, in thirty different countries, across five continents. This has included a sold-out show at London’s Jazz Cafe and the UK’s We Out Here Festival, Jazzahead and Mexico’s Eurojazz Festival. The music is rooted in Polish jazz tradition but imbued with a contemporary, urban jazz sensibility. Masolewski speaking of the album says: Jazz, to me, is music that reconciles opposites—free spirit and formal discipline, lyrical subtlety and raw emotion, individual charisma and euphoric unity. WMQ’s music is my response to an anxious world. I want our sound to offer people a sense of relief, an escape from everyday chaos, and a way to connect with something bigger – and better – within ourselves. If you want to get hold of an excellent selection of contemporary Polish and East European jazz records and more, we recommend Steve’s Jazz Sounds.
6. Matti Klein – Frontiers (Echo) single from forthcoming album
Matti Klein is a Berlin-based keyboard player and this is the first single by his trio from a forthcoming album to be released on 25 September 2025. It has the sound of an exploratory journey of musical boundary crossing – there’s soul jazz, dub effects and some contemporary cool vibes. The sound is alluringly haunting, yet with a warmth that accumulates and develops. The more you hear it the more it envelops and clings to you. Born from late-night studio jams and a desire to explore the space between breathing funk and floating groove says the accompanying publicity – and we think that pretty much sums it up.
7. Florence Adooni – A.O.E.I.U. from A.O.E.I.U.
Derek saw Florence Adooni recently at the Norwich Arts Centre – and it was a good night. This number is the title track of her recently released album and it demonstrates (though live illustrates this even more), why she is of interest to jazz lovers. Ghanaian highlife is the base from which her music derives, although she and her band have been adding new dimensions to this genre of music that’s seen a merging of jazz with West African rhythms. Horn sections have always been an important part of the jazzy/soulful elements of highlife – and Florence Adooni’s band does not disappoint. Pitches E.T. Opuku on trumpet and Emmanuel Arthur on tenor sax have featured solos on the record and seen live there were longer jazzy solos with an instrumental break in the middle of the set, where these and other players were given free rein for improvised solos. A.O.E.I.U. incidentally is chosen as standing for An Ordinary Exercise In Unity, which is how Florence sees the playing, listening to and sharing of music, I think we’d agree on that.
8. The Afro Soul-Tet – Mozamba from Afrodesia
By now we are definitely in the soul with jazz phase of the show, and a record Derek dug out from his cellar shelves. The album Afrodesia from The Afro Soul-Tet was re-released in 2010 on the San Francisco Ubiquity Records Luv ‘N’ Haight label, named after the Sly & The Family Stone tune and referencing the counter-culture strong Haight Ashbury district of San Francisco. For more on Sly’s great tune, just see below. The label imprint is used by Ubiquity Records to re-release rare grooves and Afrodesia was originally recorded between 1968-71 but received little notice at the time. The band started as a six-piece formed in Texas 1968, with seven members on this record including drums (jazz rock), drums (Latin) and percussion – although the sound is not as heavy as that suggests. This tune zips along quite melodically and merrily with guitar (Frank Morris) taking the lead. The band’s sound is rooted in a merger of soul, jazz and Afro-Latin rhythms with a social/political consciousness as evidenced by tune titles like Afro Revolt and Slave Traders. Derek will return to this little-known record with its strongly jazz-based tunes in a future show.
9. Alison Crockett – Like Rain from …on becoming a woman…
Much 21st century contemporary soul music includes elements of jazz but, often frustratingly, leaves you wanting more. This 2003 released tune from vocalist/pianist/composer Alison Crockett – incidentally voted No. 3 on Gilles Peterson’s ‘All Winners’ Top 100 of 2003 – has jazz in her voice and in the saxophone playing of Robert Landham, yet, I wish the jazz in the voice was stretched more and the sax given an extended solo stretch of freedom. Nevertheless, I love the tune – the musical arrangements, apropos of the above comments, and the sensual vocals with messages addressed to a former partner. Alison Crockett developed her skills at universities in Philadelphia and New York but got her breakthrough providing vocals for DJ King Britt and British jazz/rap group US3. More recently, she has taught vocal technique in New York City. Saxophonist Landham (also Crockett’s former husband) has some serious jazz credentials having played with include Nat Adderley, Wallace Roney, Christian McBride, Joey DeFrancesco and Stanley Clarke. More than that, he studied harmony with John Coltrane’s mentor Dennis Sandoli. And the record also includes the late and great Casey Benjamin on keys (rather than his more familiar tenor sax). If you like this, then you might want to explore the 2024 20th anniversary album reissue of this, her debut album – you can track it down here on Bandcamp.
10. Sly & The Family Stone – Luv ‘N’ Haight from There’s A Riot Goin’ On
We end with the original Luv ‘N’ Haight from Sly and the Family Stone. This is definitely in soul/funk territory but we respect Sly Stone (birth name Sylvester Stewart) and as he died in June of this year we wanted to remember his music. The tune is the opening track from the album There’s A Riot Goin On. Is it jazz? No, but words from the CD release to describe the album are enough to justify its inclusion here: a masterpiece of dark, simmering grooves and visions from the other side. It was recorded at a time of well-documented chaos for Sly and the band, with Luv ‘N’ Haight probably an appropriate title, and that chaos is echoed in this tune and others on the album. It’s very much a statement of disillusionment with the sixties counter culture and a observation on the wider darkness of the USA. The pumping bass drives the funk and the tune has the feel of a spontaneous jamming party, although most of it was recorded by Sly himself without the band members. The CD liner notes remind us that Herbie Hancock, Miles Davis, Billy Preston and Bobby Womack were fans of Sly’s music – as evidenced by that glorious Herbie tune Sly – check that out right here.