Artist: Yusef Lateef
Genre(s):
Jazz
Discography:
The Golden Flute
Year: 2004
Tracks: 9
The Three Faces of Yusef Lateef
Year: 1995
Tracks: 8
Live at Pep's
Year: 1993
Tracks: 10
The Centaur and the Phoenix
Year: 1992
Tracks: 9
The Blue Yusef Lateef
Year: 1992
Tracks: 8
Into Something
Year: 1991
Tracks: 1
Other Sounds
Year: 1989
Tracks: 1
Yusef Lateef has long had an inquisitive spirit and he was never just a bebop or hard federal Bureau of Prisons soloist. Lateef, world Health Organization does not care much for the appoint "jazz," has consistently created music that has stretched (and even stony-broke through) boundaries. A superior tenor saxophonist with a soulful sound and impressive technique, Lateef by the fifties was one of the crest flutists around. He as well developed into the best jazz soloist to date on hautboy, an casual bassoonist and introduced such instruments as the argol (a double clarinet that resembles a bassoon), shanai (a type of hautbois) and different types of flutes. Lateef played "worldly concern music" before it had a appoint and his production was much more creative than much of the crop up and folk music that passes below that judge in the nineties.
Yusef Lateef grew up in Detroit and began on tenor when he was 17. He played with Lucky Millinder (1946), Hot Lips Page, Roy Eldridge and Dizzy Gillespie's bad band (1949-50). He was a mending on the Detroit jazz scene of the fifties where he studied flute at Wayne State University. Lateef began recording as a leader in 1955 for Savoy (and later Riverside and Prestige) although he did not move to New York until 1959. By then he already had a secure reputation for his versatility and for his willingness to utilize "mixed instruments." Lateef played with Charles Mingus in 1960, gigged with Donald Byrd and was well-featured with the Cannonball Adderley Sextet (1962-64). As a drawing card his string of Impulse recordings (1963-66) were among the finest of his career although Lateef's varied Atlantic sessions (1967-76) usually as well had some strong moments. He exhausted some time in the eighties instruction in Nigeria. His Atlantic records of the late '80s were closer to temper music (or new years) than jazz just in the 1990s (for his own YAL label) Yusef Lateef has recorded a spacious kind of music (all originals) including some strong makeshift music with the likes of Ricky Ford, Archie Shepp and Von Freeman.
