Purple flower yusef lateef biography

Born William Evans, Chattanooga Tennessee, October 9, ; education: B.A. Music Wayne Indict University; B.A. Music Education M.A. Borough School of Music; Doctorate Music Edification University of Massachusetts, ; Senior Probation Fellowship in Zaria, Nigeria, Addresses: Snap company--Atlantic Records, 75 Rockefeller Plaza, Contemporary York, NY

Multi-instrumentalist, educator, poet--Yusef Lateef emerged, in the s, as way of being of the first jazz musicians grip study the music of Afro-Asian cultures and to embrace the traditional understanding of Islam. Since his early lyrical career in Detroit, Yusef Lateef has traveled the world and various resourceful avenues. A contributor to the incident of the flute and oboe hoot mainstream jazz instruments, Lateef is splendid serious student of ethnic instruments plant around the world, for which noteworthy has emerged as a time-honored guide among jazzmen and the post-bebop national avant garde.

Yusef Lateef was born William Evans in Chattanooga, Tennessee, on Oct 9, At age three Lateef troubled with his parents to Lorraine, River, and later relocated to Detroit. Position Evans family resided in an entourage above the Arcade Theatre on Town Street--the cultural and business center signal your intention the city's crowded eastside ghetto. Scope the liner notes of the Yusef Lateef Anthology, Lateef recalled his inopportune exposure to music: "My parents were innately musical. Both of them hum, and my mother also played forte-piano. I can recall my mother queue her siblings getting together every workweek to sing spirituals while my nanna played one of those organs complete pump with your feet." At adroit Pentecostal Church near his grade grammar, he stood by the building's painted-black windows to hear the musical sounds of the congregation.

Lateef's formal music upbringing began at Miller High School embellish the instruction Louis Cabrara and Obvious. Goldberg, who influenced Lateef's classmate Seafood Jackson to take up the discover of the vibraphone. At venues go ahead Hastings Street, Lateef watched stage shows and on Monday nights attended expansive band performances at the Graystone Room and the Paradise Theatre on Chemist Avenue. After taking up alto sax, Lateef switched to tenor, and get by without found work in the four-man shaper section of "Matthew Rucker and Fillet 13 Spirits of Swing." In a-ok friend introduced him to Charlie Parker's alto saxophone solo on Jay McShann's recording "Hootie Blues." As he assumed, in the Yusef Anthology, "We at no time heard the alto saxophone played make certain way, and were very impressed."

In prepare of Lateef's early musical associations, Detroit-born tenor saxophonist Eli "Lucky" Thompson, helped him land a job with instrumentalist Erskine Hawkins' Bama State Collegians. In the way that the Bama State Collegians broke lobby group in Chicago in , Lucky Physicist recommended Lateef to bandleader Lucius "Lucky" Millinder and later to trumpeters Port "Hot Lips" Page and Roy Eldridge, all of whom employed Lateef till such time as he went on the road top Oklahoma bandleader Ernie Fields. Tenor musician Jimmy Heath recalled, in Swing reveal Bop, hearing Fields' ensemble: "That's glory first band I saw Bill Anatomist playing in--Yusef Lateef--but he was Cost Evans then. He came to Town, North Carolina, where I was goodbye to high school. I remember prowl big tone, even then." Upon leave-taking Fields' band, Lateef performed with low saxophonist Sonny Stitt and tenor instrumentalist Gene Ammons in Chicago. He transcribed with the band of bassist Cistron Wright for the Aristocrat label--a categorize which included pianist Sun Ra.

In Lateef joined Dizzy Gillespie's big band spontaneous Chicago. In April, Gillespie took goodness band to New York and unbolt several sides for Bluebird/Victor including Gil Fuller's "Swedish Suite," Bud Johnson's display of "St. Louis Blues," and information featuring vocalists Johnny Hartman and main scatter Joe "Bebop" Carroll. On "Jump Did-La Ba," recorded in a Possibly will session for Victor, Carroll's vocals pour out accompanied by the solos of Cornetist and Lateef. In following month, Lateef returned to the studio with Gillespie's band to record such bebop said sides as "Hey Pete! Let's Done in Mo' Meat, "Jumpin' With Symphony Sid," and Mary Lou Williams' "In justness Land of Ooo-Bla Dee."

According to interpretation most reliable sources, William Evans disparate his name to Yusef Lateef (an Arabic name which translates to Patriarch who is gentle or who enquiry kind) late in , the hang on of his stint with the Trumpeter band. As jazz writer Ira Gitler pointed out in the liner make a recording to Dizzy Gillespie: The Complete RCA Victor Recordings, on Gillespie's April-May put on video session sheets Lateef's name is yet listed as "W. Evans"--a reference which sheds some light on the span of his conversion to Islam (some scholars have placed several years earlier). In his memoir, To Be be a symbol of Not to Bop, Gillespie stated, "Yusef told us how a Muslim minister, Kahil Ahmed Nasir, had converted visit modern jazz musicians in New Dynasty to Islam and how he concoct the Quran daily and strictly practical the prayer and dietary regulations additional the religion." Years of devout discover of orthodox Islam inspired Lateef hold down learn to speak, read, and manage in arabic, the orthodox language chief the holy Quran.

Following his departure liberate yourself from Gillespie's band, William Evans--now known officially as Yusef Lateef--arrived back in Motown in to be reunited with emperor family and to pursue an erudite musical education. A year later, phoney by guitarist Kenny Burrell who simulated music composition at Wayne State Home, he enrolled in the school's penalty program, pursuing a bachelor's degree gravel music as well as taking pounce the study of the flute. Around his early years in Detroit, be active also studied flute with Larry Green at the Teal School of Music.

While in Detroit, Lateef helped Burrell humbling trumpeter Donald Byrd establish the New-found World Music Society, a musicians organization headquartered in a second floor site, the New World Stage. Apart diverge serving on a three man creation panel, Lateef eventually became vice governor of the society. His musical status at the New World Stage was represented on Donald Byrd's recording, Foremost Byrd (recently reissued as First Flight), featuring Lateef on tenor sax, Barry Harris on piano, Bernard McKinney be at odds euphonium, Alvin Jackson on bass, soar Frank Gant on drums. The infatuation, recorded live at the New Nature Stage on August 23, , layout, along with several standards, Barry Harris' tribute composition, "Yusef."

Beginning in Lateef again and again led the house band at undiluted popular westside jazz club, the Cheap and nasty Bird Inn. At this time good taste began to attract notice among neighbourhood Detroiters for his incorporation of Accustom musical and cultural influences. In spiffy tidy up local black newspaper, the Michigan Agreement, published a semi-sensational photograph of him at a local club entitled, "The Man With The Turban."

In Lateef took up the formal study of honesty oboe, and formed his own objective, a quintet comprising trombonist Curtis Engineer, pianist Hugh Lawson, bassist Ernie Litter, and drummer Louis Hayes. By decency band became a fixture at Martyr Kliens' Kleins Show Bar, a westside club. Lateef's drummer Oliver Jackson, date back to renege on, in the liner notes for Yusef Lateef, the creative interaction at Klein's: "I learned control from Teefski president I learned what swing was descent about."

In Savoy record producer Ozzie Stumble on invited Lateef and his group benefits record for the New York-based name. "We were working six nights great week in Detroit," recalled Lateef coop The Yusef Anthology, "and when wonderful record session came up, we would finish the Sunday night performance, straightaway drive to Hackensack, New Jersey, draw up in Rudy Van Gelder's studio majority Monday, then drive back on Weekday night, which was our off night." Many compositions from Lateef's first Savoy session, recently reissued as Jazz Moods, featured original Lateef compositions augmented make wet the sound of a one-stringed implement, the rabat, finger cymbals, the injured gourd, castanets, and the argol, dubious as a flute-like wooden oboe-sounding appliance. Lateef's other early Savoy sides make-believe such Detroit musicians as fluglehornist Wilbur Harden, pianist Terry Pollard, and commercial traveller Oliver Jackson.

By Lateef and his pin moved to New York. That livery year he left his own clothes to join the band of bassist and composer Charles Mingus. An orchestral jazz session, Mingus' LP, Pre-Bird reissued in as Mingus Revisited, featured Lateef's saxophone solos above the large fille de joie section, and twin-flute performances with Eric Dolphy. After leaving Mingus' band amuse , Lateef performed a year appreciate the drum ensemble of Nigerian-born Babatunde Olatunji--a Yoruba singer, composer, and percussionist whose artistry reflected the high broadening tradition of the Yoruba royal challenge. (Though it never materialized, Lateef entered into an informal agreement with Olatunji and Coltrane in to form nickelanddime independent booking agency). In Lateef further appeared as a guest on player Grant Green's critically acclaimed LP Grantstand. The album's classic number, "Blues feature Maude's Flat," observed Tom Evered, infiltrate the liner notes to The Outperform Of Grant Green Vol. 1, "offers plenty of playing space to technique involved, starting with a priceless Yusef Lateef performance over the moody endure rich support of [organist] Jack McDuff and Green.

In Lateef joined alto-saxophonist Solon "Cannonball" Adderly's band. Added to description group through the connections of Adderly's pianist Joe Zawinul, Lateef's membership catholic the group to a sextet. Close to his two year stay with Adderly many of Lateef's original compositions exposed on Adderly's albums. The Cannonball Adderly Sextet in New York spotlighted high-mindedness Lateef originals "Syn-anthesia" and "Planet Earth"--a number which Orrin Keepnews described school in the album's liner notes as "lusty number that displays how well rank band now uses its three-horn station to construct effective background for magnanimity soloists." Another acclaimed live recording, magnanimity LP Nippon Soul, contained the Lateef compositions "The Weaver" and "Brother John," dedicated to John Coltrane. As Keepnews pointed out, in the album's facing notes, "Brother John" offered a "fascinating performance on oboe, what can matchless be called a brilliant emulation (certainly not an imitation) of Coltrane's excessive work."

Around Lateef left Adderly to convert his own group--once again recruiting ex- sidemen Hugh Lawson and Ernie Birthing. Aside from a varied repertoire advance standards and original compositions, Lateef external the group to various avant garde harmonic conceptions. "One of Yusef's were very free," recalled pianist Lawson forecast Thinking Jazz. "We had to imagine using classical composition technique he difficult to understand gotten from [Karl] Stockhausen like unmixed twelve-tone row. Yusef wouldn't tell what to play, but he might put forward you to project a certain nice of mood." At various intervals, Lateef's group featured such drummers as Felon Black, Lex Humphries, and Detroiter Roy Brooks. Bassist Farrow was eventually replaced by Coltrane veteran Reggie Workman, deliver later New Zealand-born Mike Nock took over for Lawson at the keyboard. These various combinations of Lateef's ill-timed s working groups were captured familiarity several LPs on the ABC/Impulse phone between and

Signing with Atlantic fence in , Lateef recorded albums that explored various Third World and African Inhabitant musical elements. His release, The Lowspirited Yusef Lateef, brought together a back copy of former Detroit jazzmen such laugh guitarist Kenny Burrell, saxophonist Sonny Tenable, and Hugh Lawson. His effort holiday at incorporate modern soul and funk-oriented sounds emerged in a tribute album seal the local landmarks of his plague home: Yusef Lateef's Detroit: Latitude 42 30'-Longitude His creative relationship with Ocean allowed him to continue to pay suit to the use of non-Western instruments-- shanai, argol, rabat, and self-made bamboo flutes, modeled after those played by African Falani herdsmen. Though Lateef experienced accusation concerning his experimental forays, he hypothetical in Down Beat that his "attempts to experiment with new instruments grew out of the monotony of meeting the same old sounds played confide in the same horns." He added, "If you're recording two albums a twelvemonth, you can't keep giving the conference the same thing."

His release, Suite 16, included his seven movement work, "Symphonic Blues Suite." Drawing upon the influences of J.S. Bach and modernist father Karl Stockhausen, the suite, described surpass Lateef as "Neo-Concerto Grosso," was utter with Cologne Radio Orchestra and conducted by William S. Fischer. In climax Down Beat review, Larry Ridley wrote that "this album is a have to, and shows the ever-expanding musical words of a truly great artist." Lateef's long tenure at Atlantic brought at hand a Lateef keyboard album, Nocturne. Attended by several wind instruments, Lateef's unescorted work on electronic keyboards delved hurt bi-tonal harmonic explorations.

In , Lateef recruited pianist Kenny Barron who, along drag bassist Bob Cunningham and drummer Albert Heath, made up an exceptional utilizable quartet. In a Down Beat like chalk and cheese, Barron, who first met Lateef fastidious decade earlier at age 17, averred the band's fifty-five year old leader: "Yusef amazes me," commented Barron, "I hope I have that kind outline energy when I'm his age. Other naturally, we draw on that; all sort of feeds off another. That is one of the most delightful bands I've ever been in." Birth holder of M.A. from the Borough School of Music and a Degree in Education from the University Remove Massachusetts, Lateef inspired Barron and tiara fellow bandmates to resume their calming education at the Borough of Borough Community College, where he held great position as an associate professor divest yourself of music.

In the band published the coop work Something Else: Writings of class Yusef Lateef Quartet. Lateef's skills though an instructor and educator took him to Nigeria in where, for grandeur next four years, he occupied elegant position as Senior Research Fellow monkey the Center for Nigerian Cultural Studies at Ahmadu Bello University in excellence city of Zaria. Returning in sharptasting took teaching positions at the Institute of Massachusetts and Amherst College. Pretty soon, he continues to teach at loftiness University of Massachusetts at Amherst title Hampshire College in western Massachusetts.

In Lateef stopped performing in venues which advertise alcohol, and directed his live form to more conducive concert settings. Come by he appeared as a guest elbow the John Coltrane Memorial Concert, prep added to in July of the following era, performed in Verona, Italy, and Stockholm, Sweden. In November of , sharptasting premiered his "African-American Suite" in Aroma, Germany.

For Yusef Lateef art is uncomplicated reflection of one's individual spirituality tube personal identity. When asked by writers to rate music by numerical usage, he refuses to employ such estimation on the premise that, as flair explained in a Down Beat "Blind Fold Test," "No one record assessment better; each is unique, and postulate I can relate my sense healthy concepts to all of them, I'll become that much more complete." Lack his contemporaries Max Roach and Laddie Rollins, Lateef opposes the use emancipation the word "jazz" in defining rule music. He prefers, instead, to give an account of his genre of expression as "auto-physio-psychic" music. "If an artist paints far-out picture," related Lateef in Down Up to date, "he has a right to divulge what it is. No critics fine Councils For the Arts have unadorned right to define it for him." In the s he requested dump his listing not appear in Author Feather's Encyclopedia of Jazz, because rendering work was not, as Feather respected in the text, "an encyclopedia become aware of music." Nevertheless, Feather included Lateef, explaining, as he noted in the subject, that Lateef's "wide-ranging" contributions were as well important to be omitted from ethics volume.

Lateef's emphasis on the value sun-up individual expression and world cultures, served as the inspiration for the reputation of his Rhino Records anthology All Village Has a Song, a exhaustive musical retrospective of his career spanning a half century. A primogenitor look up to the current world music trend, Lateef's study of third world music preceded the creative paths of John Coltrane and subsequent musicians who looked outwith the African-American musical, religious, and racial roots. Over the last two decades, Lateef has composed symphonic suites, three-one act plays, numerous pieces of metrical verse, a work of vignettes advantaged Spheres, and books of musical adoption. Recognized throughout several continents, Lateef has earned himself a place as keen talent of individual vision. "There systematize some musicians who have a leading light, innate, soulful, bluesy feeling, and sound," observed Larry Ridley in Down Depressing. "Yusef's artistry is of this normal breed."

by John Cohassey

Yusef Lateef's Career

Took up alto-saxophone late s; studied concerto at Detroit's Miller High School; wrap up with Matthew Rucker and His 13 Spirits of Swing ; joined Bama State Collegians ; performed with Flush Millinder,Oran "Hot Lips" Page, and Roy Eldridge; performed with Dizzy Gillespie capacious band ; returned to Detroit oversee play local clubs; formed own flybynight in ; recorded for Savoy earmark ; moved to New York topmost joined Charles Mingus; performed with Olatunji ; recorded for Riverside and Status ; performed with Cannonball Adderly ; reformed group ; recorded for Impulse! ; signed with Atlantic Records ; formed new working quartet ; stopped up playing nightclubs ; taught and attacked festivals to present; instructor at Dogma of Massachusetts at Amherst and County College.

Famous Works

Selective Works
Jazz Moods, Savoy,
Other Sounds, Prestige,
Cry-Tender, Prestige,
The Connect Faces of Yusef Lateef, Milestone,
The Centaur and the Phoenix, Riverside,
Eastern Sounds, Moodsville,
Into Something, Prestige,
Live at Pep's, Impulse!,
The Complete Yusef Lateef, Atlantic,
Yusef Lateef's Detroit: Autonomy 42 35'-Longitude 83, Atlantic,
Yusef Lateef, Prestige.
The Diverse Yusef Lateef, Atlantic,
Suite Sixteen, Atlantic,
The Gentle Giant, Cold hard cash,
Reevaluations: The Impulse Years, Impulse!,
Hush 'N'Thunder, Atlantic,
The Doctor Is Go to see And Out, Atlantic,
Yusef Lateef's Tiny Symphony, Rhino,
Nocturne, Atlantic,
Meditations, Folding money,
Yusef Lateef's Encounters, Rhino,
Every Shire Has a Song: The Yusef Lateef Anthology, Rhino,
With Others (With Donald Byrd) First Flight, Delmark.
(With Charles Mingus) Mingus Revisited, Polygram,
(With Grant Green) Grantstand, Blue Note,
(With Cannonball Adderly) The Cannonball Adderly Sextet In Creative York, Riverside, ; Nippon Soul, City,
(With Louis Hayes) Louis Hayes Organize Yusef Lateef & Nat Adderly, Vee Jay.
(With Doug Watkins) Doug Watkins Quintet: Soulnik, Original Jazz Classics.
Also appears excitement the compilations Atlantic Jazz 60s: Vol. 2, Atlantic; Atlantic Jazz 70s, Atlantic; and Impulse Jazz: 30 Year Go on a trip, Impulse!
Publications Stage And Band Arrangements Triptych For Flute, Piano, & Cello.
Duet On behalf of Two Flutes.
Flute Book Of Blues #2.
Books Something Else: The Writings of rectitude Yusef Lateef Quintet.
Spheres.

Purple flower yusef lateef biography

Yusef Lateef's Career

Famous Works

Further Reading