Wanda's Picks

This morning we will have a tribute to William B. Lawsha "Prince Lasha," September 10, 1929 to December 12, 2008. Prince Lasha was born in 1929 in Fort Worth, Texas and went to school with Ornette Coleman. In1947, the two of them started playing saxophone in a school band (which also produced great musicians like Charles Moffett and King Curtis). They worked with Harold Land and Red Connors before going their separate ways. He lived in New York, Oakland, Germany, Italy, and France where he had the honor, he says, of playing with many great musicians such as Sonny Simmons who worked with Prince for six years; Eric Dolphy, John Coltrane, and Sonny Rollins recorded together—in fact he wrote “Music Matador that Eric Dolphy made famous. Wanda’s Picks concludes with an excerpt of Matador (from …A True Story). When he made his transition last month, Prince was working on releasing a new CD on his label Birdseye Records, called “Baritone Madness.” I hope we’ll see this CD in the near future. It features Woody Shaw,