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Prince Lasha

To many jazz fans, the name of Prince Lasha will be an unknown quantity. The reason for that is in part that he hasn’t too many records out. Taking the time since the early sixties, when he started to belong to the forefront of jazz, the number of his records as a leader has remained small and even as a sideman he had little covering. The one piece that will still be on the mind of jazz fans already around in the sixties is a composition entitled ”The Cry”. Lasha recorded it in 1962 in a quintet version also featuring Sonny Simmons for the famous West Coast company Contemporary. When the record appeared to enthusiastic reviews by ”Down Beat” magazine it blew a fresh wind into the jazz scene. And even for today’s listeners Lasha’s music remains fresh and contemporary. We are on the safe side saying that Lasha made his name on the jazz scene with the single album ”The Cry”. Prince Lasha was born in Fort Worth, TX, on September 10, 1929. Fort Worth naturally brings to mind the name of Ornette Coleman, and indeed Lasha and Coleman knew each other even as kids and kept on meeting to play music, Lasha being just a year older than Ornette. With all the new elements it brought, Ornette’s music has kept something traditional, an earthy, almost rural blues feeling, and we can certainly say the same about Lasha. According to A. B. Spellman’s ”Four Lives in the Bebop Business” their high school band had Prince Lasha on alto saxophone and vocals, Charles Moffett on trumpet and Ornette on tenor. The band tried to emulate the rhythm-and-blues bands that were en vogue at the time. And when they did a concert with tunes by Louis Jordan and Billy Eckstine, Lasha is said to have given a vocal performance very close to the original. Ornette went to California in 1950, while Prince Lasha remained with the band, travelling through the South, until he also went to California in 1954. Lasha be came friends with Huey ”Sonny” Simmons, who stemmed from Louisiana, and they started working together. They say that both Prince Lasha and Sonny Simmons have been strongly influenced by Ornette, but that might be because of Ornette’s growing visibility. Truth is that Lasha’s and Simmons’s playing has been influenced most by each other, and that’s why their performances on the West Coast were so far developed and became a really deep African American music.

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Profile

Prince Lasha: The Passing of a Sax-Man

Read "Prince Lasha: The Passing of a Sax-Man" reviewed 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 ...

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Interview

Prince Lasha's Inside-Outside Story

Read "Prince Lasha's Inside-Outside Story" reviewed 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, ...

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Album Review

Prince Lasha & Odean Pope Trio: The Mystery of Prince Lasha

Read "The Mystery of Prince Lasha" reviewed 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 ...

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Profile

Prince Lasha

Read "Prince Lasha" reviewed 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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Album Review

Prince Lasha Quintet featuring Sonny Simmons: The Cry!

Read "The Cry!" reviewed by David Rickert


Give a quick listen to this CD and you might be tempted to write off Prince Lasha and Sonny Simmons as Ornette Coleman knockoffs, albeit good ones. The reality is that Lasha had been playing with Coleman since high school, swapping ideas and looking for fellow players in a world that wasn’t quite ready for what they had to offer. Coleman broke through first, and finally people were ready for Lasha; The Cry, one of Lasha and Simmons’ only appearances ...

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Recording

Prince Lasha - Insight (Dusty Groove/CBS UK)

Prince Lasha - Insight (Dusty Groove/CBS UK)

Source: Master of a Small House

Flirtations with major labels are an infrequent occurrence for most free jazz musicians. For Prince Lasha the call came during a European sojourn in the mid-60s. Lasha assembled a crew of ten musicians in a UK studio, mixing and matching them on a standards-weighted program of six tunes. Fielding plastic alto like his old pal Ornette along with wooden flute he tailored each to his designs and came up with an album that still stands out in discography checkered by ...

Rent Romus
saxophone, alto

Music

Recordings: As Leader | As Sideperson

Inside Story

Enja Records
2006

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The Cry!

Fantasy Jazz
2002

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Inside Story

NPG Records
1981

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