Yusef Lateef (1920-2013)

I reflect on nature and humanity whenever I prepare to perform or record. I believe that whatever I contemplate or try to achieve in life, a percentage of what I believe, think and feel will naturally come through my music and expression.

Jazz saxophonist, flutist, composer and educator Yusef Lateef died on December 23 at his home in Shutesbury, near Amherst, Mass. He was 93. Lateef was known for incorporating the sounds of African, Asian and Middle Eastern music into his jazz compositions, and for his ability to play a variety of instruments, including the bassoon, oboe and woodwinds from other countries.

He was born William Huddleston on October 9, 1920, in Chattanooga, TN. His family moved to Detroit when he was five, and the family name changed to Evans. He studied the tenor saxophone at Miller High School, and began playing professionally at age 18. Like many of his contemporaries, he spent the '40s as a sideman with R&B and jazz bands. He was a member of Lucky Millinder's band in 1946. His big break came when he joined Dizzy Gillespie's big band in 1949. He appears (as William Evans) on some of the later cuts of Dizzy Gillespie: The Complete RCA Victor Recordings. On "Jump Did-Le Ba," he solos right after Dizzy. The vocal is by Joe Carroll.

He was one of the first musicians to convert to Islam; he changed his name to Yusef Abdul Lateef in 1950. He spent the '50s in Detroit, studying flute and oboe at Wayne State University. He recorded his first LP as leader, Jazz Mood, for Savoy in 1956. Beginning with his third album, Prayer to the East in 1958, he began to blend non-Western influences into his music. When John Coltrane began to do the same, he cited Lateef as an influence. Here's a favorite of mine from the Savoy period with Lateef on oboe playing "In the Evening." The pianist is probably Hugh Lawson.

He moved to New York in 1960 and played with Charles Mingus and Nigerian drummer Babatunde Olatunji. His greatest exposure came as a result of joining Cannonball Adderley's group, expanded to a sextet in 1962. Here he is playing soprano sax on "Brother John" in 1963.

From the late '50s through the early '70s, he released many successful LPs on the Riverside, Prestige, Impulse and Atlantic labels.  

He spent much of the rest of his life as a student and a teacher. He received bachelor's and master's degrees from Manhattan School of Music, and a Ph.D. in Education from the University of Massachusetts in 1975. His dissertation compared Western and Islamic education. In the '80s, he spent four years studying and teaching in Nigeria. He taught both in Manhattan and at UMass from 1987 to 2002.

He distanced himself from the jazz community, saying that he found the term “jazz” degrading (he called his music “autophysiopsychic music”), and refusing to play where smoking and drinking were permitted. He began to write longer and more ambitious compositions for orchestras, many of which included non-Western instrumentation. He received the Grammy Award in 1988 (in the “New Age” category) for Yusef Lateef's Little Symphony, on which he overdubbed all the instruments.

In addition to his music, Dr. Lateef also painted and wrote both poetry and fiction. He started his own record label, YAL, in 1992 and published his autobiography, Gentle Giant, in 2006. He was named a Jazz Master by the National Endowment for the Arts in 2010. This interview is from that time. A three-part interview on Marc Myers' blog can be found beginning here.

He continue to perform through last summer.  His most recent project was a series of duets with percussionist Adam Rudolph, some of which appear on his 2013 CD Voice Prints.

You may also enjoy:

Video of the Week #27 (Cannonball Adderley, with Yusef Lateef)

Video of the Week #23 (John Coltrane)