Daily Dose Of Jazz..
William B. Lawsha, better known as Prince Lasha (pronounced “La-shay“), was born on September 10, 1929 in Fort Worth, Texas. He came of age studying and performing alongside fellow I.M. Terrell High School students John Carter, Ornette Coleman, Charles Moffett and Dewey Redman.
Lasha moved to California during the 1950s and by the Sixties he was active in the burgeoning free jazz movement, of which Ornette Coleman was a pioneer. Moving to Europe in 1966 his musical base was in Kensington, London and his album Insight was recorded, featuring local musicians including Bruce Cale, Dave Willis, Jeff Clyne, Rick Laird, Joe Oliver, David Snell, Mike Carr, Stan Tracey, John Mumford and Chris Bateson.
Prince returned to the U.S. in 1967, worked closely with saxophonist Sonny Simmons, recording two albums, The Cry and Firebirds for Contemporary Records. The latter album received five stars and an AMG Album Pick at Allmusic. He also appeared on two recordings with Eric Dolphy, Iron Man and Conversations, and Illumination! with the Elvin Jones/Jimmy Garrison Sextet featuring McCoy Tyner.
In the 1970s, Lasha and Simmons made additional recordings under the name Firebirds. In 2005, he recorded the album The Mystery of Prince Lasha with the Odean Pope Trio. He also recorded with Gene Ammons and Michael White.
Alto saxophonist, flautist and clarinetist Prince Lasha passed away on December 12, 2008 in Oakland, California.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Earl Humphrey was born on September 9, 1902 in New Orleans, Louisiana into a musical family. His father a prominent local clarinetist and music teacher, his older brother Willie was also a clarinetist and his younger brother Percy played the trumpet.
Earl learned to play trombone from his grandfather, joined a traveling circus with his father in 1919 and traveled widely in the 1920s. In 1927 he recorded with Louis Dumaine and played through the 1930s until he decided to retire from music, settling in Virginia in the 1940s.
Returning to New Orleans in 1963, he was urged to resume his musical career. He joined his brother Percy’s band and played on a few albums, including Jazz City Studio. He recorded his first sessions as bandleader in 1966 titled Igor’s Imperial Orchestra and his sophomore project Earl Humphrey & His Footwarmers the following year on the Center label. Trombonist Earl Humphrey passed away on June 26, 1971 in his home in New Orleans at the age of 68.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Marion Brown was born on September 8, 1931 in Atlanta, Georgia. He joined the Army in 1953 and three years later attended Clark College to study music. By 1960 he left Atlanta for pre-law at Howard University but after two years moved to New York City and befriended Amiri Baraka, Ornette Coleman, Archie Shepp, Sun Ra, Pharoah Sanders, Paul Bley, Clifford Thornton and Rashied Ali. During this early Sixties period he recorded several important albums such as Archie Shepp’s Fire Music and New Wave In Jazz, and most notably on John Coltrane’s Ascension.
1967 saw Brown in Paris, France where he developed an interest in architecture, impressionist art, African music and the music of Eric Satie. He became an American Fellow in Music Composition and Performance at the Cite International Des Artists in Paris, composed the soundtrack for Marcel Camus’ film Le Temps fou, a soundtrack featuring Steve McCall, Barre Phillips, Ambrose Jackson and Gunter Hall.
Returning to the US in 1970 he landed in New Haven, Connecticut taking a position as a resource teacher in a child study center in the city’s public school system for a year. He went on to be an assistant professor of music at Bowdoin College, and through the 70s joined the faculties of Brandeis University, Colby College, Amherst College and Wesleyan University, earning a Masters in ethnomusicology at the latter.
Throughout his many educational positions, Brown continued to compose and perform, lending his alto saxophone to the recording of Harold Budd’s The Pavilion of Dreams. He received grants from the National Endowment for the Arts, composing and publishing several pieces for solo piano. In 1981, he ventured into drawing and painting and his charcoal portrait of blues guitarist Blind Lemon Jefferson was included in a New York City Kenkeleba Gallery art show called Jus’ Jass, alongside Romare Bearden, Charles Searles and Joe Overstreet.
By the 2000s, avant-garde alto saxophonist Marion Brown had fallen ill due to a series of surgeries and a partial leg amputation. For a time he was in a New York nursing home but in 2005 he moved to an assisted living facility in Hollywood, Florida. He left a catalogue of twenty-five albums as a leader and several more as a sideman before he passed away on October 18, 2010 at age 79.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Bruce Barth was born September 7, 1958 in Pasadena, California. He started banging on the piano almost before he could walk. By the age of five he started piano lessons though he preferred to play by ear. When he was eight his family moved to New York where he studied piano and musicianship with Tony and Sue LaMagra for the next decade. Turning 15 his older brother Rich gave him his first jazz record, Mose Allison’s Back Country Suite. The young lad fell in love with both the music and the genre and inspired, he taught himself to play jazz by listening to records and imitating his many favorite pianists and horn players.
He went on to study privately with Norman Simmons and Neil Waltzer, and eventually enrolled in New England Conservatory in Boston, where he studied with Jaki Byard, Fred Hersch, and George Russell. Barth’s first professional recording was Russell’s masterpiece, The African Game, captured live on Blue Note Records. Arriving on the New York jazz scene in 1988, he soon joined tenor saxophonist Stanley Turrentine and their musical collaboration spanned a decade. Shortly thereafter, he toured Japan with Nat Adderley, and toured Europe and recorded with Vincent Herring’s quintet with Dave Douglas.
In 1990, Bruce joined the Terence Blanchard Quintet; the band toured extensively, and also recorded six CDs, as well as several movie soundtracks. In 1992, he played piano on-screen in Spike Lee’s Malcolm X. While in Blanchard’s band, he recorded his first two CD’s as a leader, In Focus and Morning Call; both were chosen for the New York Times’ top ten lists.
Throughout his professional life, Bruce has performed and collaborated with Tony Bennett, Steve Wilson, Terell Stafford, Luciana Souza, and Karrin Allyson, David Sanchez, James Moody, Phil Woods, Freddie Hubbard, Tom Harrell, Branford Marsalis, Wynton Marsalis, Art Farmer, Victor Lewis, John Patitucci, Lewis Nash, the Mingus Big Band, Tim Armacost, Scott Wendholt, Dave Stryker, Carla Cook, Paula West, Rene Marie, Luis Bonilla, Doug Weiss, Ugonna Okegwo, Montez Coleman, Dana Hall and Dayna Stephens, among numerous others.
As an educator pianist Bruce Barth is on the jazz faculty of Temple University, has taught at Berklee College of Music, Long Island University, currently gives private lessons to City College University and New School students, and has participated in many workshops, clinics, and seminars in the U. S. and abroad. To date he has performed on over one hundred recordings and movie soundtracks, including ten as a leader, is a Grammy nominated producer, and has served two years on the panel for the U.S. State Department “Jazz Ambassadors” program,. He continues to play solo piano, lead an all-star septet and composed for a variety of ensembles.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Eddie Duran was born Edward Lozano Duran on September 6, 1925 in San Francisco, California. He started learning to play piano at age seven, and switched to guitar by the time he was 12. After about seven months of lessons he began teaching to himself. Within his household was plenty of jazz growing up as his older brothers Carlo was a jazz pianist and Manuel was a jazz bassist.
Duran recorded as leader in 1956 with Fantasy Records, and around 1957, he was the guitarist in the CBS Radio Orchestra under the direction of Ray Hackett for the Bill Weaver Show. While playing with the CBS Orchestra, he met Ree Brunell and performed on her debut album, Intro To Jazz of the Italian-American. The album was the first LP recorded by the short-lived San Francisco Jazz Records label under the umbrella of the radio station.
Throughout the fifties he performed or recorded with his childhood friend Vince Guaraldi, as well as with Cal Tjader in his Mambo Quintet, and Stan Getz. In addition, Eddie was a featured performer and recording artist with several notable jazz combos that included his brothers. By 1960 he was leading his own trio for the next seven years but joined his brother Carlos on Benny Velarde’s 1962 album, Ay Que Rico. From 1976 to 1981 he was a member of Benny Goodman’s orchestras and octet.
Between 1980 and 1982, Duran recorded with Tania Maria, moved to New York City performing in a quartet that he organized and crossed paths with Getz again in 1983 while recording the Dee Bell studio album, Let There Be Love. The list of jazz artist he has performed with extends to Charlie Parker, George Shearing, Red Norvo and Earl Hines among others.
Eddie and his wife Mad (Madeleine) was initially a classically trained flutist, saxophonist and a music educator, continue to co-lead, perform and collaborate on five albums as well as individual endeavors.
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