Black Jazz was founded in 1971 by pianist Gene Russell and Dick Schory, former drummer, audio tech and owner of Ovation Records, which came to distribute Black Jazz. It specialized in funk jazz and free jazz and shares the honor with Stanley Cowell and Charles Tolliver’s Strata-East label, which was also founded in ’71, of being a groundbreaking jazz record label of Afro-American ownership. Like Strata-East, Black Jazz is highly collectable and characterised by trademark, classy black and white sleeves. Powerhouse is number 6 in a catalogue that runs to only 20 albums and includes albums by pianists Walter Bishop Jr. and Doug Carn, who was a bestseller and the label’s most succesful artist.
A versatile player, Chester Thompson embellishes slow-dragging funk cuts like Powerhouse with tacky blues voicings not unlike those of the great Jimmy McGriff, while his propulsive right hand lines occasionally decide to dribble playfully through the defense of the astringent, basic chords changes. The mid-tempo Trip One’s a more modern jazzy tune, in which Thompson’s style is close to the bebop-infested, pianistic lines of Jimmy Smith and Don Patterson. Underneath the cuts of Powerhouse boils a fat groove provided by drummer Raymond Pound (and Thompson’s bass lines) that show the influence of master funk jazz drummer Idris Muhammad. It may lack Muhammad’s crisp touch, but it’s deep and baaaaad.