Charles Tolliver, Music Inc - Live at Slugs', Volume I & II

2025

Charles Tolliver’s Music Inc. stretch themselves right out on these dates from 1970 recorded at Slugs’ Saloon, the legendary venue that occupied 242 East 3rd Street in the East Village from the mid sixties until 1972. The performances were originally released on Strata-East, the label Charles Tolliver founded with pianist Stanley Cowell on a ‘minimal finance but maximum passion’ basis. They were released as two volumes but are now available as a double LP and digital formats with previously unreleased tracks. The intimacy of the venue is apparent from the close and personal quality of the recording. The capacity of Slugs’ was just over 100 but it sounds smaller because there’s so little background noise on the recording, the usual talking and chinking of glasses is absent. The audience came to listen. In a recent interview for Fillius Jazz Archive Tolliver says ‘the interaction with the audience is vitally important’, and that he’s immediately able to gauge those who come to explore and find out about the music and those who already know the music. He quotes Art Blakey in this regard, ‘we’re here to wash the dust off their everyday lives’ and says ‘I’ve never felt they didn’t get it or appreciate it’.

Tolliver remembers the freeform music of his contemporaries was incubated at Slugs’ and the nearby Speakeasy. Previously there wasn’t an audience for it, just family and friends he says. Thanks to these venues the music ‘started to get legs’. On these discs it’s loose and free but at the same time highly cohesive. Music Inc. certainly set the benchmark for other musicians who approached Strata-East. Tolliver and Cowell’s ideal saw musicians investing in themselves first and coming up with a fully formed product that could then be released by the label. Thus giving the artists creative control over their output.

It must have taken an iron cast belief in their sound to keep the faith in 1970, era of rock music and shrinking commercial audiences for jazz. But thank god New York had its own scene and places like Slugs’ where musicians played uncompromising music for deeply engaged listeners. The commitment heard here is astonishing, even more so considering the outside commercial forces facing the musicians.

Slugs’ sounds like a pretty out there venue, when the club was founded in 1964, owners Robert Schoenholt and Jerry Schultz opened it as “Slugs’ Saloon”. The name Slugs’ refers to a concept in George Gurdjieff’s book Beelzebub’s Tales to His Grandson (All and Everything), where “three‑brained” humans or terrestrial beings, according to Gurdjief are described as “slugs”. It must have been an ideal venue for Sun Ra and his Astro Infinity Music who were a regular fixture.

The album sounded different to me after I’d learned a little about the story of Slugs’ as well as the tragic circumstances which contributed to its closure in 1972. I started to notice a subtle tripiness and psychedelic influence to the music apparent on bassist Cecil McBee’s beautiful composition ‘Felicite’ with the dream-like delay on Tolliver’s trumpet. The magnificent and majestic ‘Orietale’ is a fabulous outing for Stanley Cowell, it’s a stream of invention and acknowledgement that has an ambition and scale that belies the size of the venue. The fiery and sharp opening track ‘Drought’, is a tune which was absent from earlier CD versions of the album. Thankfully and crucially it’s reinstated here as it sets the tone for the whole record. The closing ‘Our Second Father’ is dedicated to the memory of John Coltrane. With drummer Jimmy Hopps’ driving energy and a deep sense of purpose, it flings the legacy of Tolliver’s Music Inc. right here into the twenty-first century; their cultural and spiritual mission is still intact and it demands our attention.

James Read