Home » Jazz Articles » Yusef Lateef
Jazz Articles about Yusef Lateef
OJC Bop and Beyond: The Cats and Yusef Lateef
by C. Andrew Hovan
As Craft Recordings continue to mine their vast collection of recordings, their new take on the decades old Original Jazz Classics imprimatur continues to offer up inspired selections worthy of wider recognition. What also sets these reissues apart is superb quality control, with remastering done by Kevin Gray and pristine pressings that in many cases offer the last word in sonic brilliance. Tommy Flanagan The Cats Craft Recordings 1959 Although it was actually ...
read moreThe Jazz Detective Strikes Again
by Mark Corroto
Producer Zev Feldman, like Joe DiMaggio, has done it again. In May of 1941, DiMaggio began a major league baseball hitting streak. People followed his exploits game after game and hit after hit. DiMaggio's amazing record of 56 consecutive games still stands to this day. Same can be said of Feldman. His detective work, finding rare archival jazz recordings (mostly concert dates) in dusty archives, continues a streak that includes music from Bill Evans, Wes Montgomery, Albert Ayler, Eric Dolphy, ...
read moreSoundtrack To A Movement: African American Islam, Jazz, and Black Internationalism
by Ian Patterson
Soundtrack To A Movement: African American Islam, Jazz, and Black Internationalism Richard Brent Turner 256 Pages ISBN: 9781479806768 NYU Press 2021 The influence of Islam on African American jazz musicians post-WWII and the influence of those musicians in the spread of Islam in American cities are interrelated topics that, broadly speaking, are not part of most mainstream histories of jazz. Weave Black internationalism into the equation, that's to say how pan-global liberation/anti-colonial movements ...
read moreYusef Lateef: An Alternative Top Ten Albums Blowing Cultural Nationalism Out Of The Water
by Chris May
A pioneer of global and modal jazz, the multi-instrumentalist and composer Yusef Lateef is only beginning to have his importance in the history of the music properly acknowledged. After languishing off-catalogue for decades, much of his output is being made available once more. A treasure trove of great jazz is out there waiting to be rediscovered. Lateef was born in Chattanooga, Tennessee. When he was five, his family moved to jny: Detroit, where he began his career playing ...
read moreYusef Lateef: The Doctor Is In ...And Out
by Chris May
The soul-jazz albums Yusef Lateef recorded for Atlantic between 1967 and 1976, of which The Doctor Is In...And Out is the tenth and final release, may prove to be among his most enduring releases. That suggestion will not chime with the sentiments of many of Lateef's longtime fans, who who dismiss the Atlantics as sell-outs and rate Lateef most highly for the hard bop / modal albums he released on Savoy, Riverside, Prestige and Impulse! before signing with Atlantic. But ...
read moreIn Memoriam: Dr. Yusef Abdul Lateef
by John Wesley Reed Jr.
Yusef Lateef defined music far from Western concepts while presenting cross-cultural fusions. His life was committed as a premier jazz saxophonist, flutist, and many woodwinds entering crossing musical boundaries. This journey ended on Monday, December 23, 2013 at his home in Shutesbury, Amherst, Massachusetts. Dr. Lateef was 93 years old. Dr. Lateef's distinctive sound came from a tenor saxophone, mystified with a big tone with blues indications. His style separated similar saxophonists during the 1940s. Playing in the ...
read moreYusef Lateef's Secret Garden
by Chris M. Slawecki
This interview was originally published in February 2000. Yusef Lateef will tell you--politely, firmly, insistently, frequently--that he does not play jazz. He was born Bill Evans in Chattanooga (TN), but grew up in Detroit a tenor saxophone student who in the 1940s worked and studied alongside the likes of Roy Eldridge, Dizzy Gillespie and Hot Lips Page. In the 1950s, he studied composition and flute at Wayne State University; shortly thereafter he assumed the name Yusef ...
read more
Giveaway
Days remaining: 5
