[Dixielandjazz] Byard Lancaster - RIP

[Stephen G Barbone]

Byard Lancaster was not a Dixieland or OKOM Jazz musician, however he was a Jazz Musician, a gentle man and my friend. He also brought jazz to young audiences here in Philadelphia. We were soul mates in that regard and often traded ideas about how to do it, what worked, etc.

Note the paragraph about jazz being born in downtown Philly via Francis Johnson in the early 1800s. Historians on the list may wish to google Francis Johnson bugler, or Francis Johnson Composer, for some interesting insight about this black Philadelphia musician during that time period. 

RIP Byard.

Sadly,
Steve Barbone
Byard Lancaster, Jazz Alto Saxophonist, Dies at 70

By Ben Ratliff - NY Times - Sept 1, 2012   

Byard Lancaster, an alto saxophonist who took part in the great wave of free jazz inspired by John Coltrane and then diversified far into other music and cultures — living in Nigeria, France and Chicago, playing blues, reggae and Afrobeat — but kept returning to Philadelphia, his hometown, died on Aug. 23 at a hospice in Wyndmoor, Pa. He was 70.

The cause was cancer, said his sister, Mary Ann Lancaster Tyler.

In 1966, playing flute and bass clarinet as well as alto saxophone, Mr. Lancaster first made his mark among the New York jazz avant-garde, which, after the models of Coltrane and others, was making music often as rushes of collective energy, in improvised harmony and rhythm.

He appeared on landmark recordings of the time by the drummer Sunny Murray and the trumpeter Bill Dixon, and in 1968 released his first album as a leader, “It’s Not Up to Us.” On these records and elsewhere, Mr. Lancaster had more than one style: a hard, bright sound influenced by Coltrane and measured out in long, fast, polytonal peals, and a much more measured, melodic and almost folklike way of playing.

He went on to play with Sun Ra’s Arkestra, the pianist McCoy Tyner and the jazz-funk band Sounds of Liberation.

Mr. Lancaster was born on Aug. 6, 1942, in Philadelphia to Wilbert C. Lancaster Sr. and Minerva A. Lancaster, and grew up in the city’s Germantown section. His father was a chef and caterer who owned a restaurant, Mary Ann’s Lunch Bar and Tea Room. Mr. Lancaster started playing piano at 4 and moved to saxophone a few years later.

His primary residence was the house that his parents bought in 1949, in which he lived from age 7 onward, sharing it with his sister. He mentored local musicians, including the bassist Stanley Clarke, the saxophonist Jaleel Shaw and Kamal Gray, the keyboardist for the Roots. He often practiced in Philadelphia’s subway concourses, which he appreciated for their acoustics. (He was arrested several times for it, in 2000 and 2001, and sued the Southeastern Pennsylvania Transportation Authority, winning $33,000 in two settlements.)

“Jazz was born in downtown Philly,” he maintained in 2008, in liner notes for a CD reissue of his 1973 album “Live at Macalester College.” He was referring to Francis Johnson, a bugler and orchestra leader known to give public performances in Philadelphia during the 1820s that involved improvisation.

Mr. Lancaster attended Shaw University in Raleigh, N.C., for a year and studied music at both Berklee College of Music and the Boston Conservatory before moving to New York.

In the 1980s he taught in Jamaica and recorded with the reggae D.J. and toaster Big Youth. In the 1990s, while teaching in Lagos, he befriended the Nigerian bandleader Fela Kuti and performed with his group.

Later that decade he lived in Chicago, where he worked with Funkadesi, a blues, reggae and world-music band, and played in the house band at Trinity United Church of Christ. (He had known the church’s pastor, Jeremiah A. Wright Jr., since his boyhood in Philadelphia.) In the late ’90s, he recorded with the blues guitarist Johnny Copeland.

Mr. Lancaster’s recordings also include “Personal Testimony” (1979), on which he performed solo, using multiple overdubbed voices and instruments, as well as albums by Ronald Shannon Jackson’s Decoding Society (“Eye on You,” 1980) and Odean Pope’s Saxophone Choir (“The Ponderer,” 1990).

In addition to his sister, he is survived by a brother, Dr. Oliver Lancaster; four daughters, Raquel Phelps, Marianne Lancaster, Alicia Lancaster-Silva and Faythaleggra Coleman; and two sons, Brian Lancaster and Cash Byard Lancaster.

“On my future CDs,” Mr. Lancaster wrote in 2008, “I will speak to the world with a combined universal sound: Chinese, Indian, South American, Puerto Rican, Jamaican, Trinidadian, German, English and North Philly rap.”