Stanley Cowell (May 5, 1941 – December 17, 2020) was an American jazz pianist and co-founder of the Strata-East Records label.

Cowell was born in Toledo, Ohio. He began playing the piano around the age of four, and became interested in jazz after seeing Art Tatum at the age of six. Tatum was a family friend.

After high school, Cowell studied classical piano with Emil Danenberg at Oberlin Conservatory of Music He included “Emil Danenberg” in his 1973 suite “Musa: Ancestral Dreams”. During his time at Oberlin, he played with jazz multi-instrumentalist Roland Kirk, which proved to be formative. He went on to receive a graduate degree in classical piano from the University of Michigan. He moved to New York in the mid-1960s.