A label founded almost accidentally by a man who had never bought a record, ESP-Disk’ never did things by the book. In 1963, New York lawyer Bernard Stollman set up shop on the 12th floor of 156 Fifth Avenue, intending to release an album of Esperanto songs called Ni Kantu En Esperanto. But that all changed one Sunday afternoon at Harlem’s Baby Grand, when saxophonist Albert Ayler blew him away. Stollman found himself saying: “I’m starting a record company. Will you be my first artist?”

ESP-Disk’ officially launched in 1964, and over the next decade, it became a radical force in jazz and countercultural music, releasing over 100 albums before Stollman wound it down in 1975. Its roster included not just free jazz pioneers like Ayler, Sun Ra, Ornette Coleman, Pharoah Sanders, Milford Graves, Paul Bley, Marion Brown, and Frank Wright, but also countercultural rock and psych-folk acts such as The Velvet Underground, The Fugs, The Godz, Pearls Before Swine, and even one-offs like Timothy Leary.

ESP-Disk’ became the epicenter for New York’s avant-garde jazz scene, capturing the energy of what came to be called “the new thing”: an assault on melodic and harmonic conventions that embraced raw expression and African-rooted improvisation. Ayler’s Spiritual Unity, recorded with Sunny Murray and Gary Peacock, was one of the label’s first jazz releases and is still considered one of the most seismic albums in jazz history.

ESP-Disk’ also captured a variety of countercultural voices, from the politically charged Fugs to the spectral folk of Pearls Before Swine, helping link jazz to the broader 1960s underground and psychedelic movements. Stollman’s approach was chaotic and DIY: record first, release quickly, often with minimal packaging, silk-screened sleeves, or colored vinyl.

ESP-Disk’ wasn’t limited to free jazz. It embraced the countercultural and experimental, helping define the New York avant-garde that influenced Philip Glass, Steve Reich, Glenn Branca, Sonic Youth, and Arthur Russell. Releases spanned from LSD psychologist Timothy Leary to yodelling astrologer MIJ, highlighting the label’s anarchic, fearless ethos.

Successes from acts like The Fugs, who hit the Billboard Hot 100, helped fund ESP’s free jazz releases, keeping radical music alive even when mainstream record stores weren’t interested.

Stollman ran ESP-Disk’ with little concern for conventional business, often paying musicians modest session fees while reinvesting in new releases. While royalties were minimal and some artists felt shortchanged, the label gave a platform to music that otherwise might never have been documented.

By 1975, funding dried up, and the label went dormant. Stollman went on to work as an Assistant Attorney General of New York State. In the 1990s, he licensed the catalog to European labels for reissues, before resuming direct releases in 2005, ensuring both archival preservation and artist recompense.