I see pressure and rejection working together on many occasions, producing ways of delivering artistic works, writes Mutawaf A Shaheed. The human spirit’s goal is to free the artist’s needs to be unhampered while attempting to express the inner and outermost feelings. Being understood is not as important as the expression itself. But suppressing these feelings intentionally is like putting pressure on a piece of coal to create a diamond. In an attempt to have the art exposed to the world, the artist is exploited and misused.

For many decades the Black artist has created many extraordinary works across the entire spectrum of every art form. The ravages of racism, which include theft of ideas and all that goes with it, created a need to be uninhibited by the blood suckers that were and still are to this day in place to try and claim the works created by the black artist as their own. Black people in general came to terms a long time ago with the idea that it would be better if they could own their property without interference and harassment by a system that does not recognise them as human beings.

Many of these artists concluded these people were never going to stop doing what they do best, that is never stop using the system or racism that they feel has made them successful for centuries. Some artists tried creating their own venues, moving to Europe, setting up their own communities, to have it destroyed by those who knew that if these Blacks were allowed to be left to themselves, they would reap the benefits of their work to the exclusion of the vampires among the oppressor class. Here for the world to see are a few artists who, to some degree, owned their music. Pressure and rejection both serve a purpose, positive and negative.

After the pioneering musician-owned labels of the 1940s–60s (documented in a previous Wire Playlist), writes Pierre Crépon, self-releasing music became an option firmly implanted among jazz musicians in the 1970s. Imprints appeared right and left, to the point that attempting even a simple representative overview would be a doomed exercise. The following selection therefore makes no such claim. Record industry historian Alan Sutton has provided a useful marker to distinguish between actual record labels and custom or vanity pressings: “Intent to distribute.” Greater access to means of production blurred the lines in the 1970s, while important attempts were made to solve the distribution problems that had hampered prior ventures. Albeit still haphazardly, alternative networks of distribution and exchanges – sometimes crossing frontiers – made it possible to probe larger portions of a continuously expanding sound world.

It has been written that nearly no musician-operated labels were of more than footnote importance in jazz history. Perhaps on the contrary, whether specific instances lasted or not, the continuous presence of the idea of self-determination constitutes an essential part of the music’s history. After all, history without footnotes is not much more than mere assertion.

Betty Carter
“I Didn’t Know What Time It Was”
From Betty Carter At The Village Vanguard
(Bet-Car/Verve)

“Bet-Car was started at a crucial stage in jazz, when the music was being put on the back burner by all of the recording companies,” singer Betty Carter told Bob Blumenthal. “It wasn’t just me, it was all the artists. Rock ’n’ roll and Motown taught the companies how to make fast money, then The Beatles opened up the crossover market.” After a negative experience with partial ownership the year before, Carter recorded this album on a May 1970 Sunday afternoon at the Village Vanguard. Wanting to create a market for her records, she opted against selling them from the bandstand. Before eventually securing distribution, she acted as her own representative: “There were a few mom-and-pop record shops in every city that took five or ten copies on consignment… I used to just tear out the record store listings in the Yellow Pages everywhere I went, then contact the shops to take records.”

Sounds Of Liberation
“New Horizons II”
From New Horizons
(Dogtown)

The Sounds Of Liberation’s until recently sole LP was recorded in early 1972 and released on the collective Dogtown imprint, named after a section of northwest Philadelphia. The Dogtown idea had been around since at least 1969, as mentions of an unreleased Party Time album in the jazz press attest. The two main soloists were vibraphonist Khan Jamal and saxophonist Byard Lancaster. Although by then possessing serious international avant garde credentials (notably with drummer Sunny Murray in France), Lancaster was focusing on the role of the musician at a local community level. The music reflected this approach. Soloing was supported by a heavy groove with electric bass and multiple percussions. “When they leave, they are humming a melody,” Lancaster told Val Wilmer in Melody Maker. “They’ve also been stretched out, and to do this, you have to know what you’re doing and analyse it. Any top entertainer has a good show… so therefore you can give a good message.”

Music Inc/Charles Tolliver
“Spanning”
From Live At Slugs’; Volume II and Mosaic Select
(Strata-East/Mosaic)

Trumpeter Charles Tolliver and pianist Stanley Cowell met as members of Max Roach’s late 1960s quintet. In 1971, influenced in part by West Coast cultural nationalism, they launched Strata-East, a derivation from the Detroit based Strata, whose primary focus was live music production. “The concept was that of a condominium. Charles and I created the corporation – in other words, we owned the building. The artist-producers owned their recording(s) – in other words, they owned space in the building,” Cowell told Superfly Records. “The success was due to hard work by Charles and myself in handling the fabrication and pressing, shipping, getting distribution, radio airplay, and expanding the catalogue… 70% of net sales went to the artist-producers. They actually had the power, had they been able to come together harmoniously with a development plan.” Based in New York, Strata-East operated as a vessel for more than 50 artist-produced and owned releases, until 1980. This May 1970 session featuring Tolliver, Cowell, bassist Cecil McBee and drummer Jimmy Hopps is one of the few live recordings taped at the legendary Lower East Side club Slugs’ In The Far East.

Bobby Few
“I’ll Never Be The Same Again”
From More Or Less Few
(Center Of The World)

An American label based in France, Center Of The World documented the unit of the same name, formerly known as The Frank Wright Quartet. “Frank and I went back to the States and registered it as a business,” bassist Alan Silva told Dan Warburton. “I decided we had to release a record. We had some negotiations with Alan Bates at Freedom, but they didn’t come to much, so I researched how much it would cost to press 500 records, simple black cover, one side white. It came to three francs each. I said, ‘OK guys, we each put $100 in, and if we sell the record at $4 we can make $2000. We’re gonna sell them off the bandstand, Sun Ra style.’ … We pressed [the first] record, and sat around smoking reefer one night, painting, autographing and drawing on them! We sold them all… The proceeds of each record were invested in the next one. Misha Mengelberg did the same with The ICP in Holland.” Following LPs also documented various reductions of the quartet. On this November 1973 recording, pianist Bobby Few is heard in trio with Silva and drummer Muhammad Ali and showcases his vocal composing.

Rashied Ali & Frank Lowe
“Exchange Part 1”
From Duo Exchange
(Survival)

Drummer Rashied Ali (older brother of Center Of The World’s Muhammad Ali) was one of the early proponents of a new kind of drumming and, famously, John Coltrane’s last drummer. Ali was also one of the few musicians involved in the 1970s loft jazz movement of artist-controlled spaces to turn his home into a full-fledged club – complete with recording facilities – Ali’s Alley. This 1972 session, recently reissued in expanded form, contributed to break the mould in terms of what kind of line-ups could be featured on an album: only Ali on drums and Frank Lowe on tenor saxophone. Coltrane’s 1967 duet with Ali, Interstellar Space, would only be issued a year later. Originally a joint venture between Ali and Lowe, Survival was registered in 1972, the year both musicians were involved with the New York Musicians Organisation and its efforts to counter the exclusion of avant garde players from the Newport Jazz Festival. This session was engineered by Marzette Watts, whose views on self-production shared with Chris Flicker and Thierry Trombert are recommended further reading.

Eric Dolphy/Misha Mengelberg/Jacques Schols/Han Bennink
“Epistrophy” (excerpt)
From Epistrophy
(ICP/ICP)

Eric Dolphy died in Berlin on 29 June 1964. He had remained in Europe after a landmark tour with Charles Mingus. Recorded in the Netherlands less than a month before Dolphy’s passing, this low fidelity tape features the saxophonist with The Misha Mengelberg Quartet minus its regular alto. Two of the Dutch musicians backing Dolphy – Mengelberg on piano and Han Bennink on drums — would go on to found The Instant Composers Pool in 1967. Both a group of variable geometry and a label, ICP released this “unreleasable” recording a decade after Dolphy’s death. In typical ICP style, the flip side just featured three minutes of Mengelberg duetting with his parrot. Dolphy’s concluding bass clarinet solo and statement of Thelonious Monk’s classic theme are excerpted here. This selection is deliberately unrepresentative of ICP as the label, along with the German FMP and the British Incus, initiated a different chapter in the history of free music.

Clifford Thornton & The Jazz Composer’s Orchestra
“Ogún Bára”
From The Gardens Of Harlem
(JCOA)

In his sleevenotes, trumpeter and trombonist Clifford Thornton describes this piece as an “Afro-Cuban (Lucumi) interpretation of a chant from Recife, Brazil which originates among the Yoruba of Nigeria. It represents the type of religious incantation which precedes a performance of ritual dance for Ogún, Orisha of iron and fire; protector of hunters, warriors, blacksmiths… and spirit of their tools.” The 1974 recording of Thornton’s orchestral work came about through the nonprofit Jazz Composer’s Orchestra Association. In 1972, JCOA organisers Mike Mantler and Carla Bley had travelled to Europe to promote a lavish new production, Escalator Over The Hill, and to network with local musician-operated labels and other small independents. Those included ICP, FMP, Incus, the fledgling ECM in Germany and Gérard Terronès’s Futura in France. In the following years, JCOA’s New Music Distribution Service would play a major role in the circulation of artist-produced music.

Jothan Callins & The Sounds Of Togetherness
“Triumph: Call To The Warriors”
From Winds Of Change
(Triumph)

Trumpeter and bassist Jothan Callins’s notes for Winds Of Change open with a John Coltrane quote and the following: “The living music – music to live by.” Callins then questions the role of music in the education of children, the nature of musically transmitted messages, the everlasting or ephemeral aspect of various expressions, dishonesty and gimmickry in “commercial garbage”. Callins’s Triumph Records was one of the many imprints that disappeared after a sole release, links in a complex web without which jazz history on record would be a monolithic affair far removed from the “living music” it indeed was. In addition to his work as an educator, Callins had played with Lionel Hampton and Olatunji. In the late 1960s, he both joined The Sun Ra Arkestra and founded his own Sounds Of Togetherness. The incarnation of the band featured on this 1975 New York recording includes bassist Cecil McBee (who appears “courtesy of Strata-East”) and drummer Norman Connors.

Collectif Le Temps Des Cerises
“Les Faux Touristes/Les Partisans” (excerpt)
From Dansons Avec Les Travailleurs Immigrés
(Le Temps Des Cerises)

The caption of this album’s front cover picture reads: “Solidarity between French and immigrant workers at the Margoline plant in the struggle for the work permit.” In 1973, Moroccan employees of the Margoline paper recycling plant initiated the first undocumented workers’ strike in France. The year before, government policies had made it impossible for immigrants to obtain work without papers and papers without work, creating an inextricable situation for undocumented workers already residing in France and setting the stage for limitless exploitation, as was the case at Margoline. Making explicitly political music, Collectif Le Temps Des Cerises members also played in political mobilisation contexts. The collective’s best known figure was pianist François Tusques, a pioneer of free jazz in France who had worked with Sunny Murray and Clifford Thornton. This 1974 recording combines several entities including The Fanfare Bolchévique De Prades-le-Lez – specialised in revolutionary songs – and workers from percussion workshops, two endeavours aiming to break the barriers between professional and non-professional musicians.

Mario Schiano/Roberto Bellatalla/Lino Liguori
“1968”
From Concerto Della Statale
(Edizioni Cultura Popolare)

Although the Italian Edizioni Cultura Popolare was not a musician-operated label, it has been included in this selection to further illustrate jazz’s circulation in alternative networks in the 1970s. “The label was operated by the Movimento Studentesco, a leftist group from Milan based in the Statale University. Some degree of help came from experienced producer and musician Armando Sciascia, founder of Vedette Records. The person behind the label was Sergio Veschi and ECP soon became Red Records. The labels shared catalogue numbers up to a point, and Red continued to document free jazz and improvised music in Italy,” says jazz historian Francesco Martinelli in an email. This performance of saxophonist Mario Schiano’s trio was taped in 1975, during a three day event entitled New Tendencies In Italian Jazz that other ECP titles further document. Notably, the label was also responsible for the first recording of Frederic Rzewski’s classic “The People United Will Never Be Defeated”. For information on artist control in Italy, see L’Orchestra.

Jef Gilson
“Love Always” (excerpt)
From Anthology 1945/1975: The Meeting Time
(PALM)

French pianist Jef Gilson’s multifaceted career encompassed a start with Boris Vian in the 1940s, receiving during a shared bill – to his great embarrassment – a response equal to John Coltrane playing “A Love Supreme”, and producing other musicians for his PALM label. Gilson’s broad stylistic range was matched by the numerous hats he could wear, from engineer to arranger and theoretician. Launched in 1973, PALM had released more than 30 LPs by the end of its final stage in the early 1980s, in conjunction with the Vendémiaire label. The excerpted 1974 recording, released in a four LP anthology of Gilson’s work, was the product of numerous sessions with Byard Lancaster at Gilson’s studio in Paris. Lancaster and trumpeter Clint Jackson III play a Gilson composition based on a heavy double bass ostinato.

Abdul Wadud
“Camille”
From By Myself
(Bisharra)

By Myself was recorded in 1977 by cellist Abdul Wadud, a former Black Unity Trio member whose discography also includes appearances on St Louis musician labels Mbari and Universal Justice. “We branched off and people were expressing themselves that way [with solo recordings]. So, I wanted to do one for the cello as well. I originally planned to do three and I didn’t get around to it,” Wadud told Point Of Departure. “That was definitely a self-produced situation. I had offers to do it with some labels, but I wanted to do it myself and have control.” Fairly certainly the first solo cello LP in creative music, By Myself remains a definitive statement. “If you want to say what you have to say when you want to say it and how you want to say it, then you have to do certain things, and if that means producing things yourself, putting on concerts yourself, promoting yourself, then it means that,” Wadud told Coda magazine. “There is work that can be created and doors that can be opened, and different approaches that can be used to generate and build audiences… and it’s a good way to get attuned to the business, so that when you decide to do something with someone else, you know exactly what’s happening.”

Arthur Doyle Plus 4
“Ancestor”
From Alabama Feeling
(Ak-Ba/Rank And File)

In 1977, in order to record his band, Arthur Doyle rented The Brook, “a loft located on the top floor of a building close to Union Square in Manhattan. It was used for modern dance and improv theatre. Saxophonist Charles Tyler had approached the people operating The Brook and had started to curate a jazz series there. Doyle only had peripheral involvement in the loft scene and met Tyler at the occasion. This led to the release of Alabama Feeling on Tyler’s Ak-Ba, a label he had founded a few years prior, to release a demo deemed too avant-garde by Prestige Records,” says Frederiksberg Records' Andreas Vingaard, who is set to reissue Tyler's first Ak-Ba release. In an arrangement mirroring the imbrication at The Brook, Doyle produced the album through his newly created Dra Records and it was distributed with an Ak-Ba label. Doyle credited Milford Graves – he had recorded for the drummer’s IPS label the year before – Sun Ra and Charles Mingus for the impetus to produce his own music. “Ancestor” is a long crescendo propelled by electric bass, two drum sets, Charles Stephens’s trombone calls and Doyle’s unique tenor sax vocalisation technique.

Harry Miller’s Isipingo
“Eli’s Song”
From Family Affair / The Collection
(Ogun/Ogun)

“Ogun was created by exiled South African bassist Harry Miller, his wife Hazel Miller and engineer Keith Beal in London in 1973. Its foundation laid in the meagre number of recordings done by Miller and his fellow travellers, whether South African or British, in the 1960s,” says South African jazz researcher Olivier Ledure. “At a point, Ogun shared offices with friendly label Cadillac, co-founded by producer John Jack and pianist Mike Westbrook. The selected composition, an original, was a Miller favourite and is typical of South African jazz as played in Europe. It carries both the joy of playing together and the pain of exile. Harry Miller died in a car crash in the Netherlands in 1983, still in exile. But Hazel Miller continues to carry the torch of the label today.”

A look at musician-operated labels published in Jazz Magazine in 1978 estimated that more than 100 companies were by then in existence. Other names included 360 Records, ADMI, AECO, AKN, Altsax, Andrew’s Music, Birdseye, Birth, BVHaast, Concept, Creative World, Daffodil, Emily, EPI, Grits, Halcyon, IAI, Kabell, Kwela, Labor, Leo, Mustevic, NYCAC, Open, Otic, Sheba, Steam, Tribe, Ujamaa, Unit Core, Watt Works, Who’s Who in Jazz.