By Carlo Wolff | Published June 2025
Stanley Cowell also is key to Charles Tolliver’s Music Inc., Live At Slugs’ Volume I and II, recorded in 1970 at a legendary New York club. There’s no fat on this beautifully produced double album. Standout tracks include Tolliver’s blazing lines on his tune “Spanning,” and Cowell’s ”Orientale,” which takes up one side of this double album. Tolliver launches it large, with full vibrato. He lays back as Cowell leans in, swirly and driving. Drummer Jimmy Hopps and bassist Cecil McBee are low-key, detonating when the tune calls for it. Tolliver takes “Orientale” out on trills and repeated notes, ascending only to return to Earth to worry it more. It finally subsides, the group’s passion spent. A stirring track — and the longest on all four sides. The set concludes with “Our Second Father,” Tolliver’s tribute to John Coltrane. After Tolliver’s brief introduction, Cowell builds a solo and McBee and Hopps heat up, opening the door to Tolliver, who plays with great bravado, scaling the heights of his horn in triumphant fashion.
