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Prince Lasha - Insight


AmirBagachelles

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Must be Xmas if 'Insight' by Prince Lasha is finally coming out on CD. :blink: Certainly one of Lasha's best - I guess the UK CBS LP was the only vinyl issue? Will dig it out..

I believe this features Stan Tracey & other British musicians, but I've never come across anybody who actually owns a copy.

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A1 Nuttin' Out Jones 6:10

A2 Out Of Nowhere 7:30

A3 Body And Soul 6:25

B1 Impressions Of Eric Dolphy 7:00

B2 Everything Happens To Me 6:40

B3 Just Friends 7:45

Credits

Bass - Bruce Cale (tracks: B2, B3) , Dave Willis (3) , Jeff Clyne (tracks: A3, B1) , Rick Laird

Drums - Joe Oliver (2)

Flute - Prince Lasha

Harp - David Snell (2)

Piano - Mike Carr (2) (tracks: B3) , Stan Tracey

Saxophone [Alto] - Prince Lasha

Trombone - John Mumford

Trumpet - Chris Bateson

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  • 1 year later...

Thanks for reactivating this thread Bentsy. I'm sorry to admit I didn't know Insight was around! Missed the vinyl the first time round for some reason. Recomendations from Lon, Sidewinder and CT are enough to for me to go for this.

As it's his birthday I'll dig out the Enja vinyl.

Edited by JohnS
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The Prince Lasha material from Berkeley and Monterey is fantastic. I have LP rips I found online. This stuff should get a decent CD treatment.

Indeed. Prince talked about putting them out on CD with extra material in the year or so before he passed. Sadly, never happened. I know someone who is trying to get the Birdseye LPs reissued properly but we'll see if it happens.

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The Prince Lasha material from Berkeley and Monterey is fantastic. I have LP rips I found online. This stuff should get a decent CD treatment.

Indeed. Prince talked about putting them out on CD with extra material in the year or so before he passed. Sadly, never happened. I know someone who is trying to get the Birdseye LPs reissued properly but we'll see if it happens.

I owned them back in the day (thanks Jerry Gordon and Third Street Jazz), and they are great. Hope they see CD issue in my lifetime.

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The Prince Lasha material from Berkeley and Monterey is fantastic. I have LP rips I found online. This stuff should get a decent CD treatment.

Indeed. Prince talked about putting them out on CD with extra material in the year or so before he passed. Sadly, never happened. I know someone who is trying to get the Birdseye LPs reissued properly but we'll see if it happens.

I believe the Enja stuff did make it to cd but it would be great to have remaining Birdseye recordings available. In fact I didn't know of their existence until this thread caused me to do a little research.

Edited by JohnS
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  • 1 year later...

Finally getting to this one...what's the background on the session? Sounds to me like Lasha hardly plays on his own date, that they (mostly) set him up to play the melodies and give everybody else solo space. Was that Lasha's own idea or the producer's?

What there is of him on here is very good indeed...I just wish there was more.

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  • 8 years later...

I somehow never got around to buying this cd when it was released and then sort of forgot about it. Until a couple of weeks ago when I found out it was on sale at Dusty Groove and ordered it. And giving it its first few spins today I'm glad I did. It's slightly more conventional than the Contemporary and Enja-stuff but it's still a very fine record. Remarkable that it was done for CBS and somehow never crossed the UK borders - the booklet offers no information as to what happened there.

I just checked the Dusty Groove-site and it's still there for $6,99.

Edited by Mark13
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On 9/16/2011 at 10:15 PM, clifford_thornton said:

 

 

Indeed. Prince talked about putting them out on CD with extra material in the year or so before he passed. Sadly, never happened. I know someone who is trying to get the Birdseye LPs reissued properly but we'll see if it happens.

Any further word on that Firebirds Live material ever seeing CD reissue?

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Porter was going to do it but they went under. Lasha owned the masters and I'm not sure what their status is.

Regarding Insight, he spoke a bit about it in an interview I did with him many years ago. It's on AAJ but I'd prefer not to drive traffic there. This will be reprinted in some more tangible form in the future. There's more on it throughout the interview but this kind of gives some background.

When did you go to England?

It was somewhere around '65 to '67. I used some of the Queen's Royal Orchestra for that record. I had a friend named John Hammond at CBS, and he always liked my playing and John Handy's playing. He said “I'm going to set you up a date for CBS in Great Britain” [which resulted in Insight, CBS UK, 1966]. I went over with a friend of mine, the bassist John Hartt, and I lived in Kensington for about a year on Russell Road, and Yusef Lateef used to come over and he wrote some of the parts for the harp. I lived with a millionaire who went on the road with Philly Joe Jones and later lost his life – John was a great bassist and sat up all night playing like Bud Powell on the bass. He had drums and everything, and I used to have Yusef come over because he was playing Ronnie Scott's club at the time. I played a concert in Cambridge, one in Brighton and recorded there. 

We rode around in Bentleys; they didn't have minks, but chinchillas for their ladies! We were staying at a mansion – the mansion had so much land to it, a great big place, and we had a baby grand piano inside so we'd play throughout the night. We built big bonfires and smoked a lot of hashish, did whatever we wanted. Having an invitation to come to this place, I took Moffett with me and Chris Bateson, and we'd do gigs. I think the family that owned it was out of the country; John was a relative of the owners. We weren't close to anyone, and the music has always been very well-mannered; it's not like rock, you don't hear this next door. We did music inside at this mansion with three or four floors, ten or twelve baths, just all kinds of beautiful areas.

When you put that band together for Insight, did that band work at all, or was it just for the record date?

It was for the record date; Stan [Tracey] was working Ronnie Scott's as was Yusef, and the other cats were working clubs too. I just went over there for CBS because John Hammond got that together. Joe Oliver was the drummer, and he was the only other brother in the band. He was in New York at some point, I think.

Coming from New York to that environment must have been something else.

Yeah, because most millionaires live in Kensington. You look at the house and you can see who built it in what year, and we don't do it that way here.

Right, we just want things to be thrown away and they're not connected to any history.

Right, but they keep up with everything in the European countries. They keep up with the music, and they know.

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interesting, read this years ago but had forgotten about John the millionaire... Apparently, he was named John Hart and also appears on Philly Joe Jones Trailways Express and in this memory by John Altman

At the age of 15 an amazing thing happened - I had become acquainted with a bass player named John Hart, who lived in the same street as some friends of mine. He was a wealthy scion of the Woolworth family and a very fine player (he would sadly die in a car crash several years later). For some extraordinary reason Philly Joe Jones arrived to live in his house, and he soon started organizing jam sessions.

 
I attended along with all the fine young (and not so young) horn players and anxiously awaited my turn. I became immediately aware that I couldn't play like any of the other guys - not just couldn't but didn't want to. They were all over their instruments, striving to impress, but it all sounded to me like text book exercises.

 
As I had my last music lesson at the age of 11, I had picked up my knowledge of the saxophone mainly by listening to other players I liked, and I had gravitated towards the melodic improvisers. So I began my solo with a carefully placed note, waited a few seconds, repeated the note, then added another and went from there. It was ostensibly a different method to everyone else, and it seemed to meet with Joe's approval, as he came up to me at the end and said 'you sound just like Joe Henderson!' - which I took to be a compliment (at least I hope it was!)

 
Shortly afterwards Hank Mobley arrived in the house. Not only did he not own a tenor, he had no mouthpiece, and I sort of regret passing on allowing him to borrow my horn, as most people assured me it would never be seen again! To have a horn played, or even pawned by Hank Mobley  - now that would be something!”

 

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Time to dig out my LP copy of ‘Insight’ on the UK CBS label. It’s not one you see here too often and was never reissued here - a bit of an oddity, in a good way.

Don’t think I saw that Dusty CD reissue over here - will grab it if I see it.

1 hour ago, adh1907 said:

Really interesting background  from John Altman. I bought Insight from a guy who used to have a record stall outside the jazz cafe in Camden Town years back. The easy listening harp makes it a very strange record. 

 Anthony

Nice find !

Edited by sidewinder
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