Stanley Cowell – Travelin’ Man
Stanley Cowell – Trying To Find A Way
Stanley Cowell – Lullaby
Roughly a day or two after I’d already recorded and sent of the December “Moods” focused on “Adoration” for those we lost in 2020, we learned of the passing of someone who I likely would have started or closed the show with, Stanley Cowell. For those of us who are fans of “spiritual jazz,” the label that Cowell co-foudned with Charles Tolliver, Strata East, is perhaps the gold standard. All of the albums were artist controlled and they are some of the most magnificent music that was produced in the 1970s. I first learned about Strata East from the 1997 Universal Sound/Soul Jazz collection of music from the label, “Strata 2 East.” This was around the period of time that I was really getting deeper and deeper into digging for vinyl, and the sounds really hit the sweet spot in terms of the kind of jazz music I was increasingly interested in. Music that you rarely heard on the radio in those days, growing up in Atlanta with a landscape dominated by WCLK, featuring virtually all-Jazz programming, though tendingh tended towards more of a straight ahead approach. The only time that WCLK didn’t play Jazz during those days was on Sundays in the afternoon, when they’d play multiple hours of gospel. WRAS, wisely chose that time to play Don Kennedy’s “Big Band Jump,” and a jazz show that I initially founded with James Diggs, Darryl “G-Wiz” Felker (and named by G-Wiz), “The Blue Note.” Over time James and Darryl weren’t able to keep up hosting duties and so the show was all mine for the last two years I was at the station, until 1998. In addition to focusing on jazz funk and dance floor jazz, spiritual jazz was a major component of the show, sounds which again, you so rarely heard anywhere in those largely pre-internet days. Interestingly enough, after leaving WRAS, a station that had sold off it’s jazz library before I’d ever gotten there, I found myself at WORT in Madison, Wisconsin, with maybe the best jazz record library I’ve ever seen, including at least 30 Strata East original albums. One that the station didn’t have and one that I searched high and low for many years until I finally got a copy last year around my birthday was this one from Cowell, something I’d long wanted for the version of “Travelin’ Man,” which was featured on the Strata 2 East compilation mentioned above.
Cowell recorded two versions of “Travelin’ Man,” on 1974’s “Musa-Ancestral Streams” and here. This version (which also features some lovely flute from Jimmy Heath, who passed in January of 2020) isn’t just my favorite of the two, it’s one of my all-time favorite tunes from those Strata East albums. Part of it is the sound, part of it is the sentiment, sung so lovingly, primarily by Charles Fowlkes Jr.
“I’m a travelin’ man, never stopping, but moving on, moving on…I’m a travelin’ man, trying my best to understand what’s going on, goin’ on…”
As someone who has lived in multiple states and has had 14 different residences in the 25 years since my mother passed, it’s safe to say that the song resonates deeply with me, as do “Trying To Find A Way,” and the album’s closing, “Lullaby.” It’s gorgeous, spiritual, life-affirming music. Something that could only come from artists fully and completely self-determining their own production and creating exactly what they wanted to create with each other. My life is made so much brighter by the records that Cowell had a hand in through the creation of Strata East, I’m so thankful to have been in a position for many years to share that music and spread it far and wide. RIP
