They don’t use vibrato. Lewis: Sometimes, you have conversations where it’s like, “This person’s a player, and this person’s an academic.” With Yusef Lateef, those worlds are blurred.
And a lot of people use it. Liebman: He wrote one of the best books on music called The Repository of Scales and Melodic Patterns. When my buddies and I saw him play with Dizzy Gillespie, before he changed his name to a Muslim name, he sounded great.
He could play speedier-tempo things as well, but he was a bit slower.
‘I remember being in the studio on that last day and just staying up 24 hours straight trying to work out all these last little kinks.
“Like, ‘Why isn’t he playing the saxophone?
When you put the academic cap on it, it’s all this shit and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. One day, a Syrian co-worker showed him the Islamic rabab. He more than “got” the sound — he got the full expression out of each particular instrument. Herb Boyd (author): He made me a bamboo flute. The band’s debut Is This It is one of those rare things- a piece of work that not only holds up to the hype, but, years and years later, still sounds close to perfect. He was very interested in discussing philosophical and religious things. You have to have examples, and they can’t be examples that aren’t present or seen. He decided it was for 12 musicians, and he had this idea to choose six instruments, and he would write so many bars, tell me how many bars he wrote, and the approximate tempo, like slow, medium, fast.
I’m reading a lot of molecular biology books and about George Washington Carver.
D. Jones: Yusef plays music.
You want to try different things. He was very much into world religions. That’s how he heard the great tenor men of the day, like Lester Young, “Chu” Berry, and Coleman Hawkins. The US edition also replaces ‘New York City Cops’ with ‘When It Started,’ as the band’s opinion of the law enforcers had changed after seeing their brave actions during the terrorist attacks.
if anything, Julian and the boys were the Johnny-come-latelies to a music scene that existed before they stumbled upon it. I loved the exotic melodies and atmosphere in his music.
Boyd: The universality he brought to his music is one thing that makes him unique among all those people coming out of Detroit.
That’s how the music stays alive. It was an incredible lecture.
The very few [that did get in], like Marian Anderson, were marginalized to an enormous level. People still do it right — they say you’ve got to play the two into five. He was my mentor in so many ways. Vibrato is your identification. Of course, that was unusual in those days.
The Strokes sounded like the reason I had fallen in love with the alternative scene in the first place; they had a clear sense of geography, message, and style indicative to their specific place and space.
D. Jones: I remember picking up that book and diving into it. Etkin: He was somebody that made you very aware he was listening. But I can’t speak to that. James Brandon Lewis (tenor sax): That big sound, that tenor sound.
Not Black from one perspective, but Black from a multitude of perspectives. R. Jones: We observed how he reacted not only on the bandstand but off the bandstand.
Coffin: Authenticity was important to him. He was such a good person. When he went to the flute, it was Yusef.
D. Jones: As a teacher, I want to make sure that I’m representing full-throated, full-bodied Blackness. It wasn’t a mirage; it was the improviser, composer, and multi-reedist Yusef Lateef, playing the blues on an oboe. Black Heat was a 1970s funk band founded by King Raymond Green and discovered by Phillip Guilbeau.Their albums include Black Heat (with guest artist David "Fathead" Newman), No Time To Burn and Keep On Runnin'.The group had one hit single, "No Time to Burn", which reached #46 on the U.S.
‘No way. Harris: He made me so mad, man! He had one of the biggest tenor sounds of the ‘60s. It was part of his life, so I’m sure it did. Stryker: He wrote poetry and short stories and did exhibition-quality drawings of trees.
I would have thousands of questions. It’s so far removed from what we think of as conventional jazz.
Lewis: I dig a more open sound, in terms of what’s informing your oral cavity. D. Jones: Blues music is American folk music. Stryker: One of the things that’s fascinating about Yusef is that the degree of experimentalism in his music picks up as he gets older. Lewis: That book kept me sane and motivated to continue to push and strive.
He’s saying, “I will not be made to be smaller because of my surroundings.”.
Boyd: Yusef was very much into mathematics.
Rudolph: I considered him to be a radiant being, and he became more and more radiant over the 25 years that I knew him.
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He sold it to me as a band that was ‘currently huge in England.’ I had been a massive Anglophile since emerging from the womb, so that was enough for me to snap up the three-song disc. Reviews were mixed, with NME giving Machine four out of five stars and proclaiming the album, ‘sounds like a mixtape the Strokes made for themselves.’ Not everyone was so complimentary, with Rolling Stone accusing the band of not ‘exactly bursting with innovative musical ideas that demand to be let loose.’.
He always put heart, soul, and deep feeling into his music.
I love that so much. I loved his writing. It sucks!”. The way it starts and ends makes you feel like you’re on a sci-fi adventure at times, but at the same time, a Black one. So it wouldn’t surprise me at all if some of that came from Yusef’s friendship and mentorship. D. Jones: Live at Pep’s is like a blues album. You don’t know what you’re going to get, but the thing is if you’re open, free, and down to go on that journey? He always acted in the highest spiritual way, dealing with people he didn’t know. Coffin: At UMass Amherst, everybody I know who knew him called him “Brother Yusef.” He would call everyone “brother” or “sister.”. So think about that — there are very few musicians like that where the older they get, the more experimental they get.
To me, he embodies this intellectualism, but also a connection to the blues is there, overtly.
At first, when Jones tried to get into Lateef, his body of work flummoxed him.
Black Heat Discography Price Guide Recently Listed Email Alerts Refine Search Results. Coffin: He was embracing of everybody, which is what Islam is. D. Jones: That, for me, is Yusef Lateef. Both covers work, the original conveying the stark beauty of minimalism while the almost illuminated US sleeve perfectly captures the almost overzealous, bursting forth nature of the album. As a fan, the album is not horrible; it just does not sparkle or demand to be listened to. Songs played include Street Of Tears, Barbara's Mood and Street Of Tears. It was awful– just awful,’ he concluded.
But the gentle giant, who would have turned 100 years old this Friday (October 9), was about more than just his records; he had a transformative effect on people.
Stryker: The sound of his tenor was so deep and rich and expressive, and so rooted in the blues. Lateef’s 80-plus record discography is the work of a complete artist — a global citizen, a curious mind, a gentle soul.
Rudolph: One of the first books he wrote was How to Improvise Soul Music. He had a bottomless range of interests.
It might be a half-step off or something. You had some of the finest piano players Detroit ever produced. Listen to the music, and that will say everything. Stryker: He was the kind of player that could play just a couple of notes or one long note and carry an incredible load of meaning. He was very authentic in his pursuits.