Though he founded one of the most influential avant-garde jazz labels of the 20th century, Bernard Stollman was a lawyer, not a musician. This may have accounted for the numerous complaints by the recording artists on his ESP label: He didn’t do a great job of it. In fact, the operating funds for the label ran out after ten years, and by 1974 Stollman went right back to being a lawyer full time. But the music he released over that decade, from Albert Ayler, to Pharoh Sanders, to Sun Ra, to Paul Bley, was the earliest explorations of experimental jazz. It was so out there, the music was released before there was an audience for it. Many ESP albums were pressed in small runs so original copies of some of the seminal works are rare and extremely valuable.
