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Jazz Articles about Prince Lasha
The Cry!
by Richard J Salvucci
This recording is, at first glance, a bit of an unusual choice by Craft Recording for its Contemporary Records Acoustic Sound Series audiophile vinyl series. Neither Prince Lasha (pronounced Lashay) nor Sonny Simmons make an appearance in Bill Kirchner's The Oxford Companion to Jazz (Oxford University Press, 2000). An earlier reviewer for AAJ allowed as how both players were talented, but probably understood no more about Ornette Coleman's theory of “harmolodics" than the average listener did. Skepticism or, indeed, lack ...
Continue ReadingEric Dolphy: At Five Spot to Iron Man Revisited
by Alberto Bazzurro
Riunire in un unico CD di quasi ottanta minuti due capolavori cosa determina? Un capolavoro al quadrato, ovviamente, ed è quanto avviene in questo album semplicemente maestoso, i cui primi tre brani riprendono il live inciso al Five Spot il 16 luglio 1961 dal quintetto da favola riunito per l'occasione da Eric Dolphy, all'epoca trentatreenne, il cui nome iniziava finalmente a circolare con una certa insistenza nel mondo del jazz anche al di là dei colleghi che già ne conoscevano ...
Continue ReadingPrince Lasha: The Passing of a Sax-Man
by Bill Leikam
December 12, 2008 saw the unexpected passing of William B. Lashaw better known in jazz circles as Prince Lasha. It sent a shudder of disbelief through the jazz community from the San Francisco Bay Area to New York. His memorial was held in Oakland California at the Mountain View Cemetery, December 20th. The large, flower filled room was packed with standing room only. A beautifully framed photograph of Prince stood before us. His sons John and Anthony spoke to us ...
Continue ReadingPrince Lasha & Odean Pope Trio: The Mystery of Prince Lasha
by AAJ Italy Staff
Si erano un po' perse le tracce di Prince Lasha, il versatile polistrumentista texano che molti ricorderanno a fianco di Sonny Simmons o Eric Dolphy, oltre che in un memorabile disco Impulse! a nome di Elvin Jones e Jimmy Garrison, Illumination! Come ci spiegano diligentemente le note di copertina in questi anni il nostro è stato prevalentemente impegnato a guadagnarsi da vivere e ora, più vicino agli ottanta che ai settanta, si toglie la soddisfazione di tornare a incidere un ...
Continue ReadingPrince Lasha's Inside-Outside Story
by Clifford Allen
Alto saxophonist, flutist, composer and multi-instrumentalist Prince Lasha was born in 1929 near Fort Worth, Texas, and came up with Ornette Coleman and Charles Moffett, but his travels have taken him both far away from and nearer to that tree. During the 1960s, after moving to New York from California, Lasha associated regularly with Eric Dolphy and reedman Sonny Simmons, and recorded a slew of sessions throughout the decade with such notable figures as Bobby Hutcherson, Clifford Jordan, Don Cherry, ...
Continue ReadingPrince Lasha & Odean Pope Trio: The Mystery of Prince Lasha
by Derek Taylor
Shooting for a faux sense of inscrutability, the tongue-in-cheek title of this new CIMP masks what is an unsurprisingly common occurrence in creative improvised music. Like others of his era who have dropped beneath the public radar since their halcyon days, Prince Lasha opted for a more financially remunerative path than the largess of professional musicianship could provide. Or to put it more simply, when the well ran dry, he sought water elsewhere. Now a septuagenarian, the time felt ripe ...
Continue ReadingPrince Lasha
by Clifford Allen
Born September 10, 1929 in Fort Worth, Tex., flutist, clarinetist and altoist Prince Lasha came from a musical family. His grandfather was a clarinetist and his father Don Jones played tenor with Count Basie's band: “Him and Herschel Evans were good friends, like [Sonny] Simmons and I." Lasha relates his youthful encounter with his future axe: “The first time I saw a saxophone, my mother took me over for a visit with her brother and I saw this thing laying ...
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