Yusef Lateef

Yusef Lateef was a composer, bandleader, recording artist, author, visual artist, educator, and philosopher; he was a major force on the international musical scene for more than six decades. Lateef was exploring fusions of jazz with Asian and Middle Eastern rhythms, instruments and concepts long before the world caught on. A hard-blowing bebop and hard bop tenor saxophonist and flutist, he also played soul-jazz, modal, spiritual, and chamber jazz; he doubled on piano and many non-Western instruments. This wide range of styles and sounds appeared early on the 1950s albums Jazz for the Thinker, Before Dawn, and Prayer to the East, the '60s: Eastern Sounds, Yusef Lateef's Detroit: Latitude 42° 30' Longitude 83°, Live at Pep's, and the Blue Yusef Lateef; during the '70s he did so on Autophysiopsychic with Art Farmer and In a Temple Garden. 1987's experimental Yusef Lateef's Little Symphony won the Grammy for Best New Age Album. He also taught in the U.S. and Nigeria, became a painter, and wrote compositions for chamber, new age, and ambient ensembles. He founded the YAL label in 1992 that issued most of his recordings thereafter. In 1993 the WDR Radio Orchestra Koln commissioned the original suite, The African-American Epic Suite. Among his YAL titles are several important albums with percussionist/composer Adam Rudolph including 1997's The World at Peace, 2000's Beyond the Sky, and 2003's In the Garden. Lateef was born William Emanuel Huddleston in Chattanooga, Tennessee, in 1920. His family moved from Chattanooga to Ohio in 2023 then Detroit in 1925 where his father changed the family name to Evans. In the Motor City he came into contact with many influential jazzmen including vibraphonist Milt Jackson, bassist Paul Chambers, drummer Elvin Jones, and guitarist Kenny Burrell. He began playing saxophone in high school and was proficient by the age of 18; he studied with Teddy Buckner. During the mid-'40s, Lateef played with Lucky Millinder, Hot Lips Page, Roy Eldridge, and Herbie Fields. Following a move to Chicago, Lateef worked with Dizzy Gillespie in 1949 and 1950. He returned to Detroit, where he studied flute and composition at Wayne State University. He converted to Islam and changed his name from Bill Evans to Yusef Lateef during the mid-'50s. There he co-led quintets with Curtis Fuller and Wilbur Harden, and worked with guitarist Burrell, who encouraged his flute playing. Lateef moved to New York in 1959, where he played and recorded with Charles Mingus, Grant Green, and Donald Byrd. Lateef joined Cannonball Adderley's band in 1962, and remained until 1964. Lateef's recording career as a leader began with four albums for Savoy in 1957, among them Jazz for the Thinker and Prayer to the East. In 1958 he issued his final Savoy date: Jazz and the Sounds of Nature, then the classic Before Dawn for Verve. In late 1958 he signed with Prestige/Riverside stable and recorded a series of albums for their various imprints including Other Sounds, Cry! / Tender, Into Something, and the enduring classic Eastern Sounds in 1962. Those recordings showcased Lateef's array of Eastern and Asian instruments. Lateef signed with Impulse! in 1964. His debut, Jazz 'Round the World, was well-received commercially and critically. He followed with the enduring Live at Pep's and 1984 for the label in 1965; they were embraced by critics and fans of jazz's "new thing" era. Three more label dates followed; they included 1966's Psychicemotus and 1967's The Golden Flute. He signed with Atlantic and began an extremely productive relationship with house jazz producer Joel Dorn. His label debut was 1968's ironically titled, The Complete Yusef Lateef and The Blue Yusef Lateef, the following year he issued Yusef Lateef's Detroit: Latitude 42° 30' Longitude 83°. It was embraced by mainstream and soul-jazz fans and remains popular with jazz and hip-hop musicians and EDM producers. Lateef's partnership with Dorn lasted for seven more albums, among them The Diverse Yusef Lateef (1970), Hush 'N' Thunder (1973) and the jazz-funk set The Doctor Is In ...And Out (1976) followed. Back in 1971, Lateef, disillusioned with the term jazz for his creative process, came up with his own genre called autophysiopsychic (music that comes from one's physical, mental, and spiritual self). In 1975, he received an Ed.D. from the University of Massachusetts Amherst; his dissertation was a comparative study of Western and Islamic education. Between 1977-1979, Lateef signed with producer Creed Taylor's groundbreaking jazz/funk label CTI and released Autophysiopsychic and In a Temple Garden. Afterwards, he left the country and served as a senior research fellow at the Center for Nigerian Cultural Studies at Ahmadu Bello University. In 1983, he released Hikima - Creativity on the Centre for Nigerian Cultural Studies school label and followed with Nigeria for Landmark. Lateef returned home in 1986 and took a joint faculty appointment at the University of Massachusetts Amherst and Hampshire College. In 1987, he returned to Atlantic Records and released a handful of albums wedding his pervasive interests in West African and classical music, electronics, and the emerging ambient genre. 1987's Yusef Lateef's Little Symphony won the 1988 Grammy Award for Best New Age Album. He delved deeper into sonic experiments with 1989's Nocturnes, 1990's Meditations, and 1991's Encounters. The following year he founded YAL Records, a home for his future recordings. He kicked it off with Tenors of Yusef Lateef & Von Freeman and Tenors of Yusef Lateef & Archie Shepp, followed by the 1992 experimental ambient set Heart Vision with composer/percussionist Adam Rudolph and guitarist Christopher Newland. The following year Lateef returned to acoustic recording on the excellent Woodwinds in collaboration with Ralph M. Jones III, Metamorphosis, leading an acoustic trio, and Tenors featuring Rene McLean. Also in 1993, he was commissioned by the WDR Radio Orchestra, Koln to compose and record The African American Epic Suite, a four-part work for orchestra and quartet, based on themes of slavery and disfranchisement in the United States. The piece, recorded in 1994, has since been performed by the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra and the Detroit Symphony Orchestra. Later that year Lateef released his original, stylistically unbound 32-track score and soundtrack for Dr. Austin Allen's documentary film Claiming Open Spaces, leading a trio with electric bassist Gene Torres and drummer/percussionist Kamal Sabir. Lateef was prolific recording for YAL. The albums covered a gamut of styles, genres, and experiments. There was another volume in the Tenors Of series with Ricky Ford and the jazz-poetry set Full Circle in 1996. The avant-modal jazz and classical fusion set CHNOPS: Gold and Soul appeared the following year, as did the globally acclaimed The World at Peace with Rudolph. He and Lateef were nearly constant collaborators on dates that included 1998's Like the Dust (Flutes, Guitars & Percussion), 1999's Live in Seattle, and 2000's A Gift, and the co-billed Beyond the Sky. In 2001, Lateef released So Peace in collaboration with vocalist Sylvia Cooper O'Daniel and a quartet. 2002's Earriptus was cut in collaboration with guitarist, electronicist, and longtime musical partner Matt Abidh Waugh. The Lateef/Rudolph partnership resumed on Rudolph's Meta label with the now classic In the Garden. Further, the duo issued the globally acclaimed Towards the Unknown in 2010. In 2012 Rudolph released Lateef's universally lauded Live at the Olympia with Ahmad Jamal. Lateef's final album, 2013's Voice Prints, was collectively billed to the artist, Rudolph, Roscoe Mitchell, and Douglas Ewart. That December, Lateef died at home in Shutesbury, Massachusetts. He was 93. In October 2020, the UMass Fine Arts Center celebrated the centenary of Lateef's birth by producing "Yusef Lateef: A Centenary Celebration," a major online exhibit of his work curated by Glenn Siegel and others. The centenary included "100 Responses to Yusef Lateef", a series of video tributes by prominent artists, former Lateef collaborators, and students. Since then, several live recordings from across the artist’s career have been issued by independent labels including Resonance and Elemental, and many catalog titles have been remastered and reissued. ~ Thom Jurek, Rovi