The idea of musicians self-releasing music is common today, but jazz musicians pioneered the concept long before it became so, in an era abounding with manufacture and distribution pitfalls. The following playlist looks at the broad array of often short-lived ventures that made up the first two decades of musician-owned labels in jazz in the US.

Charles Mingus Sextet
“Swingin' An Echo”
From Lonesome Woman Blues/Swingin' An Echo and West Coast 1945–49
(Excelsior/Uptown)

“Is that so?” was Charles Mingus’s answer when asked about the common assertion that he was the first jazz musician to have operated his own record label, Debut. Gladys and Lionel Hampton, Otis and Leon René, and Lennie Tristano, were the names Mingus then cited. Still largely unwritten, the history of musician-owned companies nonetheless constitutes a complex interconnected web leading back to the 1940s and reflecting widely diverse artistic, entrepreneurial and political intents.

Louisiana born songwriter brothers Otis and Leon René respectively established Excelsior and Exclusive in World War II era Los Angeles. On the launch of the former in 1942, the Pittsburgh Courier noted that it was “the only Negro set-up in that field of competition” since the demise of the Black Swan label of the early 1920s. Excelsior had a hand in numerous successes, including Nat King Cole’s, and secured its own pressing facility where wartime recycled shellac was put to use. Although mainly catering to the mainstream market, Excelsior also was the label for which Charles Mingus led his first session in 1945.

Arnett Cobb with The Hamp-Tone All Stars
“Shebna”
From Down Home/Shebna and Arnett Cobb & His Orchestra 1946–1947
(Hamp-Tone/Classics)

The short lived, jukebox orientated Hamp-Tone was active in 1946, launched by vibraphonist Lionel Hampton and his wife Gladys, who described it as “intended to be a show-window for promising Negro talent of all types – hot jazz, folk music and spirituals as well as dramatic and classical entertainment.” The firm was acquired by another label before its first release, with Gladys Hampton remaining president. Heard here is tenor saxophonist Arnett Cobb, with the label’s all-star pickup group.

The Coronets
“She (Sensuous)”
From Moonlight Fiesta/She and Duke Ellington & His Orchestra 1950–1951
(Mercer/Classics)

While still under contract with Columbia for his main orchestral recordings, Duke Ellington set up Mercer Records in 1950. Jointly owned by Ellington, his son Mercer and critic Leonard Feather, the imprint focused on sessions with small bands of Ellingtonians, of which this Coronets session, featuring Ellington right hand man and minority shareholder Billy Strayhorn on piano, is typical. Mercer folded in 1952 partly due to an increasingly anachronistic focus on 78 rpm discs, as the market was shifting to the recently introduced 33 rpm LP format.

Dizzy Gillespie
“The Champ”
From The Champ/Dee Gee Days
(Dee Gee/Savoy Jazz)

“One alternative to just playing it cool was to make a lotta money, make all the money,” bebop figurehead Dizzy Gillespie wrote in his autobiography of his 1951–1953 Dee Gee label, whose business was handled by partner Dave Usher in Detroit. “I’d have the record company, compose the tunes, and be an artist on the records… This was a great step forward, for although I was not the first black musician to produce his own records, I was the only one who had done so recently… People said I couldn’t get a recording contract… I just wouldn’t sign.” Gillespie was looking for a wide audience, using R&B elements and garnering accusations of commercialism, but certain Dee Gee sides such as “The Champ” have reached classic status.

Lennie Tristano
“Pastime”
From Ju-Ju/Pastime and Descent Into The Maelstrom
(Jazz/Jazz)

Pianist Lennie Tristano’s Jazz Records was one of the concrete outcomes of a grand plan around the acquisition of a mid-Manhattan loft in 1951. The space was to function as a school, studio, club, recording and publishing company, but ended up used mostly for private lessons and jam sessions. Jazz’s only release is notable for its use of overdubbing to double the piano parts at a time when multi-tracking was uncommon enough for reviewers to miss its use and ponder over remarkable ambidexterity.

The Quintet
“A Night In Tunisia”
From Jazz At Massey Hall and The Debut Records Story
(Debut/Fantasy)

John Dennis
“Variegations”
From New Piano Expressions and The Debut Records Story
(Debut/Fantasy)

Charles Mingus and drummer Max Roach were among the regular visitors to Tristano’s loft. It became the setting for one of the first Debut sessions, a company launched with partners Celia Mingus (who handled most of the business) and Margo Ferraci in 1952. Debut remained active for five years, a long stretch in the unforgiving independent record business. It became home to the first leader dates of musicians such as Roach himself, Paul Bley and Kenny Dorham. Propelled by the release of a now classic 1953 live recording of Charlie Parker, Dizzy Gillespie, Bud Powell, Mingus and Roach in Toronto, Debut maintained a very diverse catalog, as illustrated by the work of Philadelphia pianist John Dennis.

Willie Tee
“All for One”
From Always Accused/All For One
(AFO/Ace)

When drummer Ed Blackwell got the bus ticket from Ornette Coleman to join him in Los Angeles – bringing jazz history one step closer to one of its major revolutions – he was a member of New Orleans based American Jazz Quintet. Harold Battiste was the saxophonist. In 1961, influenced by Elijah Muhammad’s economic doctrine, Battiste would create the AFO cooperative with fellow Louisianan musicians. One of AFO’s goals was to use money made from popular music to further interest in contemporary New Orleans jazz. The label’s acronym stood for All For One, as sung by Willie Tee here. AFO folded in 1963 – its biggest hit having reached number three on the pop charts – after Battiste’s departure for Los Angeles, where he worked with singer Sam Cooke’s SAR Records.

Sun Ra & His Myth-Science Arkestra
“We Travel The Spaceways”
From When Sun Comes Out
(El Saturn/Enterplanetary Koncepts)

El Saturn holds a unique place in the history of musician ventures, much as its main artist and co-founder Sun Ra does in the history of music. Industry norms were not a concern to Sun Ra, a fact amply demonstrated by the product documenting the bandleader’s music. El Saturn records were most often home assembled, distributed hand to hand on bandstands, featured little reliable information and ran parallel to deals with other labels. The decades since its mid-1950s start in Chicago with partner Alton Abraham have not sufficed to put the work of Saturn discographers to rest. When Sun Comes Out was the first Saturn LP to feature The Sun Ra Arkestra after its New York relocation, as it was taking its place in the emerging avant garde jazz community there.

Mary Lou Williams
“It Ain’t Necessarily So”
From Mary Lou Williams
(Mary/Smithsonian Folkways)

Pianist Mary Lou Williams’s Mary imprint again illustrates the diversity of intents and practical modalities behind musician-owned labels. A 1964 collaboration with Folkways, this first recording since Williams’s comeback from jazz scene retirement – in which the Gillespie couple was influential – and embrace of Roman Catholicism interfaced with the work of her Bel Canto Foundation, a charity assisting musicians affected by alcohol and drug abuse to which part of the proceeds went. The LP included Williams’s first sacred works, notably “Black Christ Of The Andes”.

Charles Mingus
“Meditations On Integration” (excerpt)
From Mingus At Monterey andThe Jazz Workshop Concerts 1964–1965
(Charles Mingus/Mosaic)

Less than three months passed between Charles Mingus’s performance at the 1964 Monterey Jazz Festival in California and the appearance of an advertisement in the New York Times for a “just pressed” double album of the concert. Until then, the artist-operated aspect had rarely been put forth, but the ad promoted a “custom-pressed” mail order exclusivity from Mingus’s own private label that would not be distributed in record stores. The final section of the extended suite for a 12-piece orchestra “Meditations On Integration” is excerpted here.

Don Pullen & Milford Graves
“PG I” (excerpt)
From In Concert At Yale University
(SRP)

Avant garde pianist Don Pullen and drummer Milford Graves – former half of the Giuseppi Logan Quartet as heard on the landmark ESP-Disk' label – further assigned a central place to artist control with SRP (Self Reliance Program). “Musicians are now creating situations wherein… creative abilities, stagnant for so long because of repressive conditions, may now be fully realised,” read the insert of their 1967 hand-painted release. “This involves first of all freeing the mind of these ideas which stifle creativity, the development of confidence in the artist’s innate ability to survive and create in spite of organised obstacles, and when a high level of artistry and consciousness has been realised, the production by the artists themselves of their own work in print or on record.”

Philip Cohran & The Artistic Heritage Ensemble
“El-Hajj Malik El-Shabazz”
From El-Hajj Malik El-Shabazz/Detroit Red and Singles
(Zulu/Midday)

Also in 1967, Chicago trumpeter Phil Cohran, a former member of The Sun Ra Arkestra and co-founder of the Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians, started issuing material under the Zulu imprint. This dedication to post-hajj Malcolm X, the first Zulu 45, was rerecorded for inclusion on a Zulu LP which had the particularity of having been taped live at the Afro-Arts Theater, a rare instance of artist control extending to performing space.

Ed Blackwell
“Farid”
From The Complete Clifford Jordan Strata-East Sessions
(Mosaic)

News of the imminent appearance of a company called Frontier Records trickled out in 1968. Frontier sessions were produced by saxophonist Clifford Jordan, a former member of Roach and Mingus ensembles. The first sessions were taped in January 1968 at Town Sound Studio in Englewood, New Jersey, a black-owned business close to the famous Van Gelder Studio. Never materialising as Frontier LPs, part of the music appeared on Strata-East, an important musician-controlled project of the 1970s. This Ed Blackwell session – featuring saxophonist Luqman Lateef, trumpeter Don Cherry and bassist Wilbur Ware – remained shelved until its inclusion in a 2013 Mosaic box set.

Jazz Composer’s Orchestra
“Preview”
From Jazz Composer’s Orchestra
(JCOA/ECM)

With roots in the Jazz Composers Guild of 1964–1965 – whose members included Sun Ra and Milford Graves – the Jazz Composer’s Orchestra Association was a successful attempt at making the existence of an orchestra capable of performing large scale works of avant garde composers possible despite the lack of a market. Chartered by composer and trumpeter Mike Mantler and composer and pianist Carla Bley, the JCOA took cues from the classical world, organising as a nonprofit financed mainly by donations and subsidies. The first realisation of the JCOA’s record company arm was a box set of Mantler compositions featuring prominent soloists such as Cecil Taylor, Don Cherry and, here, Pharoah Sanders.

Clifford Thornton New Art Ensemble
“Uhuru”
From Freedom & Unity
(Third World/Atavistic)

Trumpeter and trombonist Clifford Thornton’s Third World evolved from concert production activities, a key but less visible part of artist control initiatives. A former Sun Ra Arkestra member and Pharoah Sanders colleague, Thornton taped this session with John Coltrane bassist Jimmy Garrison the day after the saxophonist’s funeral in 1967. He was able to finance a release in 1969. “The objective of a label like Third World is of course not commercial,” Thornton told Jazz Magazine. “It is less about sales than it is about starting a collective work allowing musicians to progress, with every record having a documentary value regarding the evolution of our work. Who could be interested by a non-commercial product?”

Black Unity Trio
“John’s Vision”
From Al-Fatihah
(Salaam/Gotta Groove)

Although generally very marginal, mentions of musician ventures did appear in jazz world institutions such as Down Beat magazine. One would be hard pressed to find information on the Black Unity Trio's Al-Fatihah album on the traditional jazz circuit. Saxophonist Yusuf Mumin, cellist Abdul Wadud and drummer Hasan Shahid followed a radical self-determination platform echoed by the rawness of the avant garde group’s playing. “We never one time played at a nightclub, we refused to do that,” Shahid said of the group’s live performances in a Wire interview. “What we did when we cut the 500 copies of the first album… We sent a nice introductory letter and an album to each one of these [black student] societies, and got work out of it.”

Control over the setting of creative expression would be a major aspect of 1970s jazz. Other names figuring in this early history of musician-owned labels include Sunshine, Sunbeam, Wax, King Jazz, Mars, Nocturne, Octave, Wave, Advance Guard, Jazzline and Tangerine. They set the stage for many more.