Yusef Lateef

[Mark Stryker]

Jazz legend comes home with the blues on his mind

BYLINE: Mark Stryker, Detroit Free Press

Sep. 4--Jazz aficionados have been buzzing for weeks about the rumor that Yusef Lateef was going to play the blues when the 86-year-old Detroit-born legend returned home to perform Monday night at the Detroit International Jazz Festival. In this case, "the blues" was meant literally as in the 12-bar elemental musical form, as well as a metaphor for the kind of fundamental modern jazz that the tenor saxophonist, flutist and oboist used to play back in the day.

In his last appearance at the jazz festival in 1999, Lateef explored a multi-ethnic idiom with his band Eternal Wind. The music's abstraction upset the festival's bebop fan base, and even those who appreciated the aesthetic questioned whether the large Amphitheatre at Hart Plaza was the proper venue for such experimentation. This time Lateef was fronting a traditional piano-bass-drums rhythm section. But nobody should have been surprised that his landscape for improvisation remained rooted in a pan-Asian, Middle Eastern and African sound world of earthy rhythm, exotic texture and open form. This is the music that Lateef -- whose nascent experiments with non-Western ideas came 50 years ago -- has been committed to for a long time.

Still, he did play the blues, the 12-bar kind. In the middle of his set at the Pyramid Stage he picked up his oboe and, with the rhythm section laying down traditional swing in a slow walking tempo, blew several spare choruses with plangent expression and bent pitch. The traditional harmonies were enriched by extensions and substitutions that coated the down-home soul with a sophisticated glaze. The jam-packed audience took to it like catnip.

The performance had an air of ritual. Lateef, physically imposing in a purple dashiki, recited poetry, played flutes of various kinds, including two wooden ones of his own invention, and manipulated an Indian double reed whose sound he colored by cupping his hands around it. The cast of the music was moody, meditative and prayerful, as if Lateef were pleading for peace in a world gone mad.

On one long piece, pianist Alex Marcellos, bassist Avery Sharpe and drummer Kamal Jones played a rolling vamp that sounded like a cross between a swampy shuffle from the Gulf Coast and a West African chant. Lateef's plaintive tenor phrases suggested field hollers -- on some level, of course, Lateef has never stopped playing the blues, even when he ventures a long way from the 12-bar variety. It's as much a part of his DNA as Detroit.

Lateef's energy seemed to come and go, but there were times when the spirit welled up within him and the music ascended to a higher plane of muscularity and excitement. One came during a long free-jazz duet with Jones' aggressive drums during which Lateef's quick bursts expanded into squawks and rippling phrases running up and down the horn. His tenor tone billowed, gaining weight and stamina.

When the set was over, Lateef's old friend Dave Usher, who produced Lateef's early recording taped live at Cranbrook in the '50s, gave him the festival's Jazz Guardian Award for his lifelong contributions. Lateef accepted humbly and then read one of his poems filled with lovely imagery of flowers, natural beauty, the inevitability of death and the glory of the Creator. It seemed a fitting close for a spiritual man whose autobiography is titled "Gentle Giant."

{END}

[jimi089]

The performance had an air of ritual. Lateef, physically imposing in a purple dashiki, recited poetry, played flutes of various kinds, including two wooden ones of his own invention, and manipulated an Indian double reed whose sound he colored by cupping his hands around it. The cast of the music was moody, meditative and prayerful, as if Lateef were pleading for peace in a world gone mad.

On one long piece, pianist Alex Marcellos, bassist Avery Sharpe and drummer Kamal Jones played a rolling vamp that sounded like a cross between a swampy shuffle from the Gulf Coast and a West African chant. Lateef's plaintive tenor phrases suggested field hollers -- on some level, of course, Lateef has never stopped playing the blues, even when he ventures a long way from the 12-bar variety. It's as much a part of his DNA as Detroit.

Lateef's energy seemed to come and go, but there were times when the spirit welled up within him and the music ascended to a higher plane of muscularity and excitement. One came during a long free-jazz duet with Jones' aggressive drums during which Lateef's quick bursts expanded into squawks and rippling phrases running up and down the horn. His tenor tone billowed, gaining weight and stamina.

Very well said Mark. I was at the show and you summed it up perfectly. I could have listened to him keep playing for hours more, what a wonderful concert.

[sheldonm]

I saw/heard Lateef at Joe Segal's 80th Birthday party. He was playing with Von Freeman and they were playing a little "out" and Joe pulled the plug on their performance when they ran a few minutes over. Walked out on stage in the middle of a tune and stopped them....love that Joe!!!! I think Von and Yusef got a kick out of it. What a great night

m~

[Peter Friedman]

I recall the mid 1950's and early '60's when I was living in Detroit. Saw Yusef Lateef live countless times. Always loved his big bold blues based tenor sax playing most of all. It was personally disappointing for me when he eventually moved into a heavily muti-ethnic style of music. To my ears jazz lost one of the outstanding jazz players.

[BillF]

Never saw Yusef Lateef play. Just saw him crossing Leicester Square in London in the sixties wearing a beret and carrying a saxophone case. He was appearing at Ronnie Scott's at the time.