Yusef Lateef

Autophysiopsychic music

Yusef Lateef was born William Emanuel Huddleston on October 9, 1920 in Chattanooga, Tennessee (he told Culturecatch in 1997 the date was February 11, 1920), moved to Lorain, Ohio in 1923 and Detroit in 1925, where his father changed the family name to Evans, and died on December 23, 2013 in Shutesbury, Massachusetts, aged 93. After high school he toured with swing bands, switched from alto to tenor saxophone under Lester Young's influence, and in Detroit knew Milt Jackson, Paul Chambers, Elvin Jones and Kenny Burrell. He joined Dizzy Gillespie's orchestra in 1949, then studied composition and flute at Wayne State. His main instruments were tenor saxophone and flute, plus oboe, bassoon and piano, and non-Western instruments including bamboo flute, shehnai, xun, arghul, koto and rabat.

His first record as leader was Jazz for the Thinker (1957, Savoy), and Prayer to the East that year already combined the shehnai and Middle Eastern influences with standards. He recorded Eastern Sounds on September 5, 1961, played in Cannonball Adderley's sextet in 1962 to 1964, including Newport in 1963, and made Jazz 'Round the World (1963), Live at Pep's (recorded June 1964), 1984 and Psychicemotus (1965) for Impulse!. The late 1960s and 1970s brought Atlantic and CTI records including Yusef Lateef's Detroit, Hush 'N' Thunder (1972) and Part of the Search (1973). He took a bachelor's degree in 1969, a master's in 1970 at the Manhattan School of Music, and an Ed.D. at the University of Massachusetts Amherst in 1975, and taught there and at Hampshire College. In 1980 he declared he would no longer play venues serving alcohol.

He rejected the word jazz and coined autophysiopsychic music for music from one's physical, mental and spiritual self. He won a Grammy for best new age recording in 1987 for Yusef Lateef's Little Symphony, on which he played all the parts, founded YAL Records in 1992, composed The African American Epic Suite (1993) for the WDR Radio Orchestra in Cologne and worked with the percussionist Adam Rudolph from 1988 to 2013. The NEA made him a Jazz Master in 2010. His autobiography, The Gentle Giant, written with Herb Boyd, appeared in 2005 or 2006. Posthumous releases include Golden Flower: Live in Sweden (recorded 1967) and Alight Upon the Lake (recorded 1975 in Chicago). Cat Stevens borrowed the melody of "The Plum Blossom" for "I Love My Dog" (1966) and Lateef is now credited as co-writer; Nujabes sampled two Eastern Sounds themes.