Yusef Abdul Lateef (born William Emanuel Huddleston; October 9, 1920 – December 23, 2013) was an American jazz multi-instrumentalist, composer, and prominent figure among the Ahmadiyya Community in the United States.
Although Lateef's main instruments were the tenor saxophone and flute, he also played oboe and bassoon, both rare in jazz, and non-western instruments such as the bamboo flute, shanai, shofar, xun, arghul and koto. He is known for having been an innovator in the blending of jazz with "Eastern" music.[1] Peter Keepnews, in his New York Times obituary of Lateef, wrote that the musician "played world music before world music had a name".[2]
Lateef's books included two novellas titled A Night in the Garden of Love and Another Avenue, the short story collections Spheres and Rain Shapes, and his autobiography, The Gentle Giant, written in collaboration with Herb Boyd.[3] Along with his record label YAL Records, Lateef owned Fana Music, a music publishing company. He published his own work through Fana, including Yusef Lateef's Flute Book of the Blues and many of his orchestral compositions.
Biography
Early life and career
Lateef was born in Chattanooga, Tennessee, as William Emanuel Huddleston. His family moved, in 1923, to Lorain, Ohio, and again in 1925, to Detroit, Michigan, where his father changed the family's name to Evans.[4]
Throughout his early life, Lateef came into contact with many Detroit-based jazz musicians who gained prominence, including vibraphonist Milt Jackson, bassist Paul Chambers, drummer Elvin Jones and guitarist Kenny Burrell. Lateef was a proficient saxophonist by the time of his graduation from high school at the age of 18, when he launched his professional career and began touring with a number of swing bands. The first instrument he bought was an alto saxophone but after a year he switched to the tenor saxophone, influenced by the playing of Lester Young.[5]
Lateef began recording as a leader in 1957 for Savoy Records, a non-exclusive association which continued until 1959; the earliest of Lateef's album's for the Prestige subsidiary New Jazz overlap with them. Musicians such as Wilbur Harden (trumpet, flugelhorn), bassist Herman Wright, drummer Frank Gant, and pianist Hugh Lawson were among his collaborators during this period. In 1960, they played an extended gig at the Minor Key, a non-alcoholic club at Dexter and Burlingame in Detroit.[9][10]
By 1961, with the recording of Into Something and Eastern Sounds, Lateef's dominant presence within a group context had emerged. His "Eastern" influences are clearly audible in all of these recordings, with spots for instruments like the rahab, shanai, arghul, koto and a collection of Chinese wooden flutes and bells along with his tenor and flute. [citation needed] Even his use of the western oboe sounds exotic in this context; it is not a standard jazz instrument. Indeed, the tunes themselves are a mixture of jazz standards, blues and film music usually performed with a piano/bass/drums rhythm section in support. Lateef made numerous contributions to other people's albums, including during his period as a member of saxophonist Cannonball Adderley's Quintet during 1962–64.[citation needed]
In the late 1960s, he began to incorporate contemporary soul and gospel phrasing into his music (albeit with a strong blues underlay) on albums such as Detroit and Hush 'N' Thunder, presaging the emergence of jazz fusion. Lateef expressed a dislike of the terms "jazz" and "jazz musician" as musical generalizations.[11] As is so often the case with such generalizations, the use of these terms does understate the breadth of his sound. In the 1980s, Lateef experimented with new-age and spiritual elements.
In 1975, Lateef received an Ed.D. from the University of Massachusetts Amherst; his dissertation was a comparative study of Western and Islamic education. Thereafter, he served as a senior research fellow at the Center for Nigerian Cultural Studies at Ahmadu Bello University throughout the early 1980s.[12] Returning to the United States in 1986, he took a joint faculty appointment at the University of Massachusetts Amherst and Hampshire College.
The Manhattan School of Music, where Lateef had earned a bachelor's and a master's degree, awarded him its Distinguished Alumni Award in 2012.
His last albums were recorded for Adam Rudolph's Meta Records. To the end of his life, Lateef continued to teach at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, Smith College, and Hampshire College in western Massachusetts. Lateef died of prostate cancer on the morning of December 23, 2013, at the age of 93, survived by his wife, Ayesha, and son, Yusef.[18][19]
Following his death, Lateef's family auctioned off many of his instruments, in the hopes that they would continue to be played. Woodwind player Jeff Coffin purchased Lateef's main tenor saxophone. as well as his bass flute.[20]
In October 2020, the UMass Fine Arts Center celebrated the centenary of Lateef's birth by producing "Yusef Lateef: A Centenary Celebration", a major online exhibit of his work curated by Glenn Siegel and others. The centenary includes "100 Responses to Yusef Lateef", a series of video tributes by many prominent artists and former Lateef collaborators and students.[21]
Repository of Scales and Melodic Patterns. Massachusetts: Fana Music. 1981.
Ziky Kofoworola; Yusef Lateef (1987). Hausa Performing Arts and Music. Nigeria: Department of Culture, Federal Ministry of Information and Culture.
Night in the Garden of Love. Massachusetts: Alnur Music. 1988.
Yusef Lateef; Herb Boyd (2005). The Gentle Giant: The Autobiography of Yusef Lateef. Morton Books Inc.
Personal life
Lateef said that what he remembered most about his childhood was "My passion for nature."[22]
In 1980, Lateef declared that he would no longer perform any place where alcohol was served. In 1999, he said: "Too much blood, sweat and tears have been spilled creating this music to play it where people are smoking, drinking and talking."[2]
Lateef's first wife, Tahira, predeceased him, as did a son and a daughter.[2]
