eJazzNews Archive

Something About Yusef Lateef

Originally published on eJazzNews · · Profiles

On January 31, 2003, the original eJazzNews published an unsigned profile of Yusef Lateef, the saxophonist, flutist, oboist, composer and teacher. Lateef was 82 at the time. He died at 93 on December 23, 2013, at his home in Shutesbury, Massachusetts.

What the 2003 profile said

The profile listed the reed and wind instruments he played, from tenor saxophone, flute and oboe to bamboo flute, shanai, shofar, argol and the sarewa, the Fulani flute he had studied in Nigeria. It said his orchestral works had been played in Germany and by the Atlanta, Augusta and Detroit symphony orchestras, and that he had just finished a concerto for piano and orchestra and was arranging its premiere.

It gave most space to The African American Epic Suite, a four-movement work for quintet and orchestra on slavery and disfranchisement, commissioned in 1993 by the WDR in Cologne. According to the profile, the suite was later performed by the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra under Yoel Levi at the 1998 National Black Arts Festival and by the Detroit Symphony Orchestra under Thomas Wilkins in 2001. It also covered his teaching as a Five Colleges professor at the University of Massachusetts Amherst and his term “autophysiopsychic music,” meaning music that comes from the physical, mental and spiritual self.

Two details need correcting. The profile dated the Grammy for Yusef Lateef’s Little Symphony to 1987, the year the album was recorded; the award, for Best New Age Performance, was presented at the 30th Annual Grammy Awards in 1988. It also named the WDR producer as “Ulrich Kurtz”; the album credits give Ulrich Kurth.

Why Wikipedia links here

The English Wikipedia article on Federico Ramos, a Uruguayan guitarist born in 1953 in Treinta y Tres, cites this profile under the title “Review The African-American Epic Suite” as its source for the suite’s February 2001 performance with the Detroit Symphony Orchestra. Wikipedia has marked the link dead since April 2024. The profile is not a review; it lists Ramos (spelled “Frederico”) among the musicians in Lateef’s touring ensembles, with Barry Harris, Kenny Barron and Adam Rudolph.

According to Wikipedia, Ramos co-founded the group Eternal Wind with Charles Moore, Adam Rudolph and Ralph Jones, and the group toured with Lateef. The credits of The World at Peace, recorded live on June 16, 1995, at the Jazz Bakery in Los Angeles and released on YAL and Meta Records in 1997, list Ramos on acoustic, electric and MIDI guitar alongside Lateef, Rudolph, Moore and Jones.

Lateef’s life and career

He was born William Emanuel Huddleston in Chattanooga, Tennessee, on October 9, 1920, and grew up in Detroit, where his family moved in 1925. He toured with swing bands led by Lucky Millinder, Hot Lips Page and Roy Eldridge, and in 1949 joined Dizzy Gillespie’s orchestra. Around that time he converted to Islam through the Ahmadiyya movement and took the name Yusef Lateef. Back in Detroit he studied flute and composition at Wayne State University, then earned bachelor’s and master’s degrees at the Manhattan School of Music in 1969 and 1970 and a doctorate in education at UMass Amherst in 1975. He played in Cannonball Adderley’s sextet from 1962 to 1964 and from 1981 spent four years as a research fellow at Ahmadu Bello University in Nigeria.

What happened next

Lateef published his autobiography, The Gentle Giant, written with Herb Boyd, and in 2010 the National Endowment for the Arts named him a Jazz Master. After his death in 2013, the Fine Arts Center at UMass Amherst marked his centenary in October 2020 with an online program of concerts, readings and interviews, and the official Yusef Lateef store issued The African American Epic Suite as a limited edition CD in 2020. For context on his main instrument, see our guide to jazz saxophone players.

Where to start listening

  • Eastern Sounds (Prestige/Moodsville, recorded 1961): a quartet date with Barry Harris on piano, with Lateef on tenor saxophone, flute, oboe and Chinese globular flute, including his “Love Theme from Spartacus.”
  • Live at Pep’s (Impulse!, 1964): a live club set with his own group, which The Guardian’s obituary called excellent.
  • Yusef Lateef’s Little Symphony (Atlantic, 1987): the Grammy-winning album on which he played all the parts himself.

Sources

This page is based on an article from the original eJazzNews archive (2001 to 2018), with background and sources added in 2026. The original text is not republished here. You can read the original as it appeared on eJazzNews via the Internet Archive.
Browse the eJazzNews archive