Yusef Lateef, who died on Monday after a bout with prostate cancer, was a devout Muslim who did not like his music to be called jazz because of the supposed indecent origins and connotations of the word (although those origins are still debated). He preferred the self-coined phrase "autophysiopsychic music." Furthermore, his music encompassed an impressively broad range of styles, and the only Grammy he won was in the New Age category -- for a recording of a symphony. Think about those things amid the flood of Lateef obituaries with "jazz" in the headline.
That said, certainly Lateef's own musical origins indisputably revolved around jazz. Growing up in Detroit, a highly fertile musical environment in the 1930s and beyond, Lateef got his first instrument, an $80 Martin alto sax, at age 18. Within a year he was on the road with the 13 Spirits of Swing (arrangements by Milt Buckner). A Detroit friend, tenor saxophonist Lucky Thompson, helped Lateef get work with Lucky Millinder in 1946, and though the man he was brought in to replace ended up not leaving the band, it brought Lateef to New York, where he heard Coleman Hawkins, Charlie Parker, Dizzy Gillespie, and more, and played with Hot Lips Page and Roy Eldridge. He then joined the Ernie Fields Orchestra for about a year. His next stop was Chicago in 1947-48, where he and Sonny Stitt practiced together. It was at the end of 1948 that he made his first released recordings, with bassist Eugene Wright & His Kings of Swing, a group which included Sonny Blount, later known as Sun Ra. And it was in Chicago that he was introduced to Islam, specifically the Ahmadiyya movement, and changed his name from Bill Evans to Yusef Lateef.
Lateef then played tenor in the Gillespie big band for more than a year, recording for RCA and Spotlite, until the economics of post-war jazz broke up that band and Yusef returned to Detroit. He continued playing, with Kenny Burrell and as a leader, worked on an automobile assembly line, and studied at area music schools. He took up flute at the suggestion of Burrell around 1951; oboe followed, with lessons from the first-chair oboist in the Detroit Symphony, Ronald Odemark. Even working at Chrysler contributed to his musical development when a Syrian co-worker made him a rabat (a one-string fiddle made out of horse hair and goat skin), which he later used in a number of pieces instead of bass. Lateef quit Chrysler when his band got a six-night-a-week job playing at Klein's Show Bar, and in April 1957, 37 years old and a professional musician for more than 17 years, he played his first two sessions as a leader, for Savoy, using his Klein's group of Curtis Fuller (trombone), Hugh Lawson (piano), Ernie Farrow (bass), and Louis Hayes (drums), with percussionist Doug Watkins added for recording. The musical style was basically hard bop, sometimes mixed with R&B/jump blues styles and some early forays into world music-inspired sounds on which he played argol, a Middle Eastern twin-piped reed, and used the aforementioned rabat, exploring a heavily modal sound on some tracks.
Additional sessions for Savoy, Verve, and Prestige over the next two-and-a-half years began to establish his reputation. Among the especially notable: The Sounds of Yusef Lateef (Prestige, 1957) includes a nifty version of "Take the 'A' Train" but caused some controversy with its use of a 7-Up bottle and balloons, making some observers wonder if Lateef, then a newcomer, was serious. He was, but he had his humorous side too and didn't see the two moods as exclusive of each other. He also was incorporating instruments from around the world into his music, and played argol here. Other Sounds (New Jazz [a Prestige sub-label], 1957) is from the same session, with Wilbur Harden (flugelhorn), Lawson, Farrow, and Oliver Jackson (drums).
His rising profile enabled Lateef to move to New York City, where he joined the Charles Mingus band, which already contained Eric Dolphy and Rahsaan Roland Kirk. He soon became a member of the Cannonball Adderley Sextet, and his work with that very popular band exposed Lateef's talents on sax, oboe, and flute to a broad audience, with his oboe feature on the blues standard "Trouble in Mind" much noted.
He continued to record prolifically as a leader, and this period produced some of his most important albums. The Centaur and the Phoenix (Riverside, 1960) contains his most complex session and largest group of this period, with two trumpets (Clark Terry and Richard Williams), trombonist Fuller, baritone sax (Tate Houston), bassoon (Josea Taylor), Lateef on tenor, oboe, flute, and argol, and a rhythm section of pianist Joe Zawinul, bassist Ben Tucker (bass), and drummer Lex Humphries (drums). The music includes arrangements of material by symphonic composer Charles Mills, plus a pair of considerably less ambitious bonus tracks, probably an aborted single, from 1961. Eastern Sounds (Prestige, 1961), a quartet with pianist Barry Harris, Farrow, and Humphries, is notable for "The Plum Blossom, " on which Lateef plays the Chinese globular flute, a pentatonic instrument with only a five-note range. Its restricted range matters little compared to how well he exploits the instrument's unique tone. Into Something (New Jazz, 1961) offers the most straight-ahead compositions, including a few standards and the oboe blues "Rasheed," with drummer Elvin Jones swinging fiercely throughout. Harris and bassist Herman Wright complete the quartet.
In 1963, Lateef signed to Impulse!, the same label as his friend John Coltrane, and made Jazz 'Round the World, the first of six excellent albums for Impulse!. The quintet date Live at Pep's (1964), his most popular Impulse! release, captures a smoking club date with trumpeter Richard Williams, pianist Mike Nock, bassist Ernie Farrow, and drummer James Black, a tight working unit. "Sister Mamie" is a soul-jazz classic.
Lateef's discussions with Dolphy and Coltrane were mutually influential, with his interests in world music especially stimulating to them. He later compiled the impressive book Repository of Scales and Melodic Patterns (FANA Publishing, Amherst, 1981), which draws on a vast range of material: expansions on scales derived from Scriabin, Berg, and Bartok; Hungarian, Egyptian, Pygmy, Chinese, Mongolian, Japanese, Indian, Persian, Arabic, and archaic Greek scales; Lateef's triple-diminished tone rows, and much more, including "synthetic formations" given to Lateef by Dolphy in 1961. (Lateef also wrote Flute Book of the Blues vols. 1 & 2, Method on How to Improvise (Soul Music), and Music for Two Flutes (20 Modern Duets), as well as various scholarly papers.)
After Impulse!, Lateef signed with Atlantic (where he also did session work, often under the pseudonym "Joe Gentle," on records by Little Jimmie Scott, Esther Phillips, Ray Bryant, Roberta Flack, and others) and then CTI, his work on both labels often strongly flavored with pop and R&B sounds. At the same time he was accumulating a considerable number of degrees in music and education, and at the end of the 1970s, Lateef interrupted his Stateside recording career to move to Nigeria to accept a teaching position.
When he returned in the mid-1980s, his musical style shifted to a more composed vein. This frequently misunderstood second Atlantic period includes much beautiful work. His first new recording, Yusef Lateef's Little Symphony , released in 1987, won the New Age Grammy Award, though it's more classical in nature. He followed up with Concerto for Yusef Lateef, the gorgeous Nocturnes, and a number of other works also unfairly maligned by critics who dismissed it merely for not being jazz. My favorite of these is the largely unheralded Nocturnes (1989), meditative chamber music on which Lateef played flutes and, in a first for him, keyboards, joined by three horns but no rhythm section; the music floats, creating beautiful soundscapes closer to impressionism than anything else but utterly original.
When his contract with Atlantic was not renewed, Lateef formed his own label in 1992, YAL, and entered his most prolific period. Tenors of Yusef Lateef & Archie Shepp (YAL, 1992) is the prize in Lateef's series of two-tenor records, with full-bodied playing by the stars and tracks dedicated to Thelonious Monk and Gene Ammons. The African-American Epic Suite (ACT/Blue Jackel, 1994), a four-movement depiction of the African-American experience for quintet and orchestra, commissioned for the Köln Radio Orchestra. Given a luxurious eight days to record, the quintet (with Lateef and Ralph Jones III on winds, Federico Ramos on acoustic and electric guitars, Charles Moore on flugelhorn, shofar, dumbek, and conch shell, and world percussionist Adam Rudolph) is well-integrated within the larger group, and the orchestration is quite effective. Fantasia for Flute (YAL, 1996) is stylistically similar to the best of the later Atlantic material, and has Lateef at the peak of his flute powers. Earth and Sky, Tenors and Flutes] (YAL, 1997) found Lateef sounding vital and imaginative on an album which came as quite a surprise: over angular rhythms suggestive of the funk/hip-hop incorporations of Steve Coleman, Lateef rapped (okay, recited short poetic phrases, does that make purists feel more comfortable?) in hypnotic fashion, which somehow relates back to blues. His speaking voice is a beautiful instrument, and his lyrics reflect his gentle philosophy.
My favorite from this period is The World at Peace: Music for 12 Musicians] (YAL & Meta, 1996), a dual release on Lateef's and Rudolph's labels. A major work full of innovative writing which may well be the crowning achievement of Lateef's 1990s work, its high ambition is matched by its unfailing achievement. Lateef's use of unusual compositional processes peaked here; he and Rudolph wrote parts separately that nonetheless fit together almost magically. They continued to work together, and their 2005 album In the Garden is also excellent (my review is here).
Lateef was long ensconced at the University of Massachusetts and at Hampshire College in Amherst, MA and continued to explore new systems of musical expression, remaining active till the end.
On July 12, 1997 I interviewed Lateef in his Amherst office for British magazine The Wire (which made a mess of my article by interpolated a bunch of nonsense about Black Muslims, which had nothing to do with Lateef's Ahmadiyya beliefs). Here, published for the first time, is the complete transcript of that interview. Note how gentle Lateef was with the nearly ignorant interviewer!
SH: I guess I'll start at the very beginning. I've seen two different dates for your birth, 1920 and 1921.
YL: '20 is correct, 2/11/20.
SH: In Tennessee.
YL: Yeah, Chattanooga.
SH: And when and why did your family move to Detroit?
YL: Actually my father, I think he was in quest of a better life and work I suppose. We moved from Chattanooga to Lorraine, Ohio when I was about three. And then when I was four he migrated to Detroit from Lorraine and I started kindergarten in Detroit. That's where I remember as home, Detroit.
SH: And when did you start playing music?
YL: In high school. Back in my first year in high school, I was 18.
SH: And what prompted it?
YL: The influences that existed in my environment. Like local musicians, I would find them playing in the street that I would frequent, the main street, it was called Hastings Street in Detroit, it's now the Chrysler Freeway. I would stand outside the windows and hear musicians play, trumpets, saxophones, drums. And also when I was 12, I lived upstairs over a theater called the Arcady Theater, and they had stage shows there, and I lived over it and on the roof I could look though the window from the cinema projector. They would let me look through the window at the pictures and at the stage show. And there was a tenor player named Al Farush [?], and a trumpet player named Buddy Bell, and sometimes I would go in the theater and sit with him right in front and listen to him, watch him, and I became influenced and decided I wanted to play music just by those impressions.
SH: And there was quite a thriving scene in Detroit at that time.
YL: Well, yeah, I was only 12 then but there was a lot of music, a lot of live bands all around the city. And finally I got an instrument by the time I was 18. When my Dad told me if I got half of the money he would give me the rest, so I found a saxophone for $80, alto saxophone. And I sold papers and I saved up $40 and my Dad gave me the other 40. So at 18 I got this Martin alto saxophone. And I entered high school, and I [started] the saxophone in high school formally with a music teacher named John Cabrera. I remember, it was at the Miller High School, and Milt Jackson was in that class and I was there the day that John Cabrera suggested that Milton play vibraphones, and obviously he's become one of the world's great vibraphonists. And his brother Alvin Jackson was there and he played bass, and there was a tenor saxophonist named Lorenzo Lawson, who was, I think he graduated by the year after I got there, he could really play the tenor saxophone, he was an impression. But he died young, and he was supposed to take Lester Young's place with Count Basie when Lester left, but he died, prematurely, Lorenzo Lawson.
SH: Was he any relation to Hugh Lawson?
YL: No he wasn't, I asked Hugh about that, he was no relation, but he certainly was a great influence, on all of us. And of course, other than the local influences, every Monday, at a place called the Greystone Ballroom in Detroit, which is no longer the Greystone Ballroom, there would be a band from out of town, like Andy Kirk, Count Basie, Don Redman, Tiny Bradshaw, Cab Calloway, and we would go, the musicians, those who liked music, we would stand in front of the band and listen to Lester Young, and Don Byas, and we'd do very little dancing, we would just listen. And of course when Cab came we would hear Chu Berry and I saw him play, and there was Budd Johnson with Earl Hines's band, and there was the Jimmie Lunceford Band, and I'm trying to remember what tenor player, Jimmy Crawford, no, that was the drummer, I can't remember his name but there was a very good tenor player with the Jimmie Lunceford Orchestra, he later became a funeral director, but he could play the tenor saxophone [maybe he means Joe Thomas].
SH: Sy Oliver was his arranger, right?
YL: I think so, I think so. Snooky Young was with them. With the Andy Kirk Orchestra there was Dick Wilson, a tenor player, who influenced me very much. He had such a beautiful sound. There was Dick Wilson with that band, and Don Byas. And with the Tiny Bradshaw Orchestra there was Count Hastings, I don't know if you remember that tenor player. But I used to check all the tenor players with those big bands, because I became gung-ho for the tenor saxophone, although I played alto for the first year. And of course there were the local musicians like I mentioned, Al Farush, Buddy Bell, et cetera. There was a local tenor player named Louis Barnett who could play quite well, he was an influence. So I had many influences. There was Kenny Burrell's brother, Billy Burrell, he played guitar, and he later changed to bass. And fortunately I played with a high school band, it was called Matthew Rucker and the Spirits of Swing. It was 13 pieces. We left high school for a year, in 1939 I think, and we were fronted by a band leader named Hartley Toutes [?] out of Florida. And we had a stage show with the Whitman Sisters, the dancers Pops and Louis Whitman. And we traveled all the way from Detroit to Miami, Florida, for a year. And that was a great experience. And we returned and finished high school. The trumpet player, the leader was a trumpet player, Matthew Rucker. And he used to win all the first-place contests in the state of Michigan, he was such a dynamic trumpet player. And now he owns the Blue Ribbon Taxi Cab Company, in Detroit. And I was fortunate to have that experience. And we were the most-loved band big band in Detroit at that time. In the saxophone section was myself, Alfonso Ford the other tenor player, he played first tenor, he passed, and Frank Porter, who was the third alto player, he's now retired, he lives in Cleveland. And John Taylor, the first alto player, the dynamic first alto player, he also played with Andy Kirk later on, he played baritone. He passed also. That was the saxophone section, four saxophones. Willie Shorter played piano. He worked for Motown later on, he was the composer for Motown. Lawrence Hicks was the drummer, he passed also, Walter Bragg was the bassist. Priscilla Royster was the vocalist, she now lives in Canada. And that was a great experience. And we had an arranger for the band, who really helped make the band kind of...he played organ...his brother played with Jimmie Lunceford, I can't think of his name! Maybe it will come to my mind later. But it was a grand 13-piece band.
SH: It seems that the big bands were very fertile ground for producing a lot of musicians who really had the basics down, and that that has perhaps been missed since the demise of the big bands.
YL: Yeah, that was kind of the grooming station, the big bands of the '30s and '40s. But the big band, it went out in the early '40s I think...the late '40s. It was too expensive, I think, to carry a big band around. I think that's why Dizzy broke up his big band, which I had the good fortune of playing with, '48-49. And the small combos came in.
SH: I've read that Lucky Thompson recommended you to Lucky Millinder, and Lucky Thompson is from Detroit I guess, how you did you get that recommendation?
YL: Yeah, Lucky and I were and still are good friends, we were good friends. Lucky went to Cass High School which is one of the better high schools in Detroit. And he sat behind my wife in algebra class, I remember that. I knew Lucky, and we used to practice out of the Ben Verekan [sp?] saxophone book in my basement, that was, say, around '41-42. Lucky was very determined to develop himself. In fact, before he got a saxophone he got a broomstick and cut notches on it, for keys, and practiced. Lucky left Detroit maybe right after Wardell Gray did. He went to New York early, maybe '42-43, and he was in an environment of people like Coleman Hawkins and Don Byas, and I think Coleman Hawkins took a liking to Lucky, and Lucky learned how to play quite well at an early age as a result of being in that environment. And it was in about '45, Lucky recommended me for a position with a group called the Bama State Collegians and the Trenier Brothers and I joined them in Chicago, Sonny Stitt was in the band, Lucky was in the band, his wife was the vocalist, and I think Johnny Jackson was in the band playing first alto. Anyway, we played the Regal Theater, and the band broke up after that week. So I went back to Detroit. And then later on in '46, the next year, Lucky recommended me for a position with Lucky Millinder. I left Detroit and went to New York in '46 to join Lucky Millinder. They were at the Apollo Theater when I arrived. This was the last week for the tenor player whose place I was to take. So I practiced the music all week in the hotel there, but at the end of that week something happened, the tenor player was supposed to go with Cab, and he didn't go and he stayed with Lucky. So Lucky, he apologized and gave me two week's pay, which was the union rule. And I just stayed in New York. I was so fascinated by it, to be there and see all those musicians standing on the corner like Hot Lips Page and Coleman Hawkins, and 42nd Street was Charlie Parker, Dizzy Gillespie, so I just stayed in New York. And during that time I had the good fortune of playing with people like Hot Lips Page, Roy Eldridge, and finally I left town with a group out of Tulsa called Ernie Fields. I must have stayed with Ernie Fields about a year and then I thought it was time to leave. I went to Chicago, there was a lot of music there. In fact Gene Ammons was there, Sonny Stitt was there, so it was like '47-48, that I was in Chicago. And Sonny and myself, and some other musicians, Buddy Butler the drummer, we'd get up every day and practice together.
SH: And it when you were in Chicago that you recorded with Eugene Wright.
YL: Yeah, I don't know if I recorded, I played with him.
SH: Uh, it's on your discography.
YL: I've seen that, I don't remember recording, it could be correct.
SH: Well, it also lists Sun Ra in the band.
YL: Sun Ra was in the band.
SH: And obviously there's some potential connections in your interests and his interests.
YL: Well, I don't know. His name was Sonny Blount then and he was the pianist and composer. He would write things like "Spellbound," that was a moving picture. Spellbound, do you remember that? It was a psychologically involved picture if I remember correctly. Anyhow he would write some unusual arrangements and I had the pleasure of playing them with Eugene Wright. He was the first musician I knew that had a tape recorder, a wire tape recorder. And I met him then and there. From Chicago I joined Dizzy. I called Dizzy, I heard that Moody had stayed in France after recording "Moody's Mood for Love" and he needed a tenor player so Dizzy sent me a plane ticket to join him in San Francisco, that was, I think, '48. And I did, and I stayed with Dizzy for a couple of years.
SH: And it was some time in that period that you converted to Islam?
YL: It was. I converted in about the last of '48, through the Ahmadiyya movement in Islam.
SH: I don't really know too much about this so I hope you'll go into some depth.
YL: Well, the Ahmadiyya movement in Islam was founded by a man named Hadhrat Mizta Ghulam Ahmad. He lived from 1835 to 1908, and the movement [was]founded in 1889. There are over ten million Ahmadiyya Muslims now in the world in over 120 countries. And I was introduced to Islam through this movement through a man named Talib Dahoud [sp?]who played trumpet I met in Chicago during that time I lived in Chicago, he told me about the Ahmadiyya movement in Islam. And so when I went to New York I would visit the Ahmadiyya mission house. And finally after a year I embraced it, because I thought it was the right thing to do and it seemed right. It preached the unity of mankind, and brotherhood. Of course, that was the way I had felt about humanity for years, that humanity should be united as one, one brotherhood. And that's what the movement preached and practiced, so I said, better come on in, you know, 'cause that sounds right. And I saw this practice, I've seen that happen. I've been to the Ahmadiyya mission houses in various countries, in Ghana, Nigeria, Copenhagen, Hamburg, I knew some German Ahmadiyyas, Indonesian, Bangladesh, Swedish. And so I'm convinced that it's correct for me. And I don't know anywhere else to go. So that happened, I was initiated in about'48.
SH: And you were attracted to it obviously because it jibed with how you felt, but did it also have some influence on you?
YL: Yeah, I hope it has. I feel that it has. I feel that I've become a better human being, more sensitive to the needs of other people. And I try to respond to those things. And this is something that I felt is natural, from a youth. You know, pre-Islam I used to carry the Bible around, I would read it. I've always been interested in God, the idea of God, and who is God and how does he function and what is our relation. And Islam claims to bring one into the focus of realizing that God is their earthly helper, and it gives one the means of developing a relationship with the Creator through prayer, through good deeds, and this is something that one experiences by doing these things. And that's what I've realized. And of course then there are the Hadeese [sp?] which are the sayings of the prophet, which is, 'Seek knowledge from the cradle to the grave. Seek knowledge even though it be in China.' And I've tried to embrace these ideas, they had lots to do with me going back to school. And the idea in the teachings is that the purpose of obtaining knowledge is to help others -- that means so much to me, it takes away selfishness. It helps you quell that if it should loom up, you know. And so those kinds of ideas appeal to me because it makes me feel like a brother to all humanity. It makes me feel like a servant. Those are some of the ideas that influence me and have had a kind of an effect on my existence, on the way I look at life and humanity. I think some of what I am telling you manifested before my mother and father died, because they never censored me for becoming Muslim, because I think they could see the truth, I had more love for them than I'd ever had. Of course parents can see things that you can't see. It's caused me to be more serious about the evolution of my occupation as a musician and teacher. I take it very seriously and I try to evolve my music rather than establish one thing and just do that the rest of my life. That's why my music seems to take on different shapes, from time to time. Because I nourish certain ideas and try to develop and bring in processes that I've never used before.
SH: Adam [Rudolph] said that you told him that you try to do something new on every record.
YL: Yeah. New or different. As opposed to doing the same thing. Like say I write a song on the changes of "I Got Rhythm." I wouldn't want to do the same thing the next album, I wouldn't want to use the same structure. That to me would be a kind of complacency. So I look for other structures, I try to develop structures and forms to hang my hardware and my expression on. And it's interesting, it's a challenge, but it's interesting at the same time, because every day I have to go back to where I left off and try to move from that point. It's like a journey through poetics. You know, for the last two or three months, from time to time I think about Billie Holiday, what a great teacher she was. She taught so much in what she left with us, the music. She taught us about the spirit. The depth of feeling, how one can put expression and feeling into sound. You know, when I was a young guy I used to listen to her over and over every day, just for that element, that was so prevalent. I mean, she gave you more than notes and intervals, she gave you her spirit. It was embedded in each sound.
SH: One of the things you said about searching for knowledge even if you have to find it in China...
YL: Even though it be in China.
SH: ...certainly suggests a motivation for your use of multiple instruments, which probably surpasses anyone. The number of instruments that you have played on your records is mind-boggling.
YL: I hadn't thought about it like that [chuckles]. I have a penchant for finding instruments that I can utilize. Sometimes they come when I don't expect them. Like I was playing at Ronnie Scotts in the '60s and a Chinese man gave me a Buddhist temple flute. And I still have it. I was walking through Chinatown one day in New York and I saw a little globular-like object and it was the Chinese globular flute, and I recorded a piece called "Plum Blossom." And it has such a beautiful delicate sound, you know. It was liked so much by Guy Stevens -- Yusef Salaam -- he put words to it. I think it's "My dog likes your dog," and he pays me the royalties as a result of putting words to that piece that came from a little Chinese flute, was based on the pentatonic scale. Then I remember playing Complain-la-Tour [Belgium] with Cannonball Adderley in '63, an Indian pianist came up and asked me did I know about the shinae? Which was a double-reed instrument, I told him no, so he sent me one. Later I found out that Bismilla Khan is the virtuoso of the shinae, and I've utilized that instrument in some of my pieces, compositions. So you never where instruments are coming from. And then, I have a penchant for making flutes. I manufacture flutes from time to time. I made one flute Cannonball named the Pneumatic Bamboo Flute, that you insert the finger in as well as manipulate the holes. But there are only three holes for finger holes. And then I made the Moan flute, the diameter of this flute is about five inches, it's the biggest piece of bamboo I've ever had in diameter, I got it in Nigeria. I call it the Moan flute, there's only the aperture to blow in, and you manipulate the sound by closing the end of it off, and releasing the opening at the end. And I've found numerous places to utilize that, in different compositions.
SH:When did you begin adding to your instrument collection like this?
YL: That started when I began to record in '56. I made my first recording, and it was then that I decided that I would have to expand the canvas of my music if I were to keep recording. And so I started looking for instruments that I could utilize like the argol, and I made an instrument called the "earth board" during the '50s, of wire and wood. A friend that I met at Chrysler, Chrysler Auto Company, a Syrian person, he made a rebab, that's the one-string fiddle, made out of horse hair and goat skin, and I utilized that in a piece called "Morning." And it was during that period that I began to study the oboe, also.
SH: Which you studied with the first oboe in the Detroit Symphony
YL: Yes, Ronald Odemark, yes, and I studied bassoon after I arrived in New York.
SH: After you had been in New York you moved back to Detroit and studied music at two different colleges.
YL: Yes. You mean in Detroit? I went to Williams State, I took some classes, and Larry Teal School of Music. Yes. I began to study flute at the Larry Teal School of Music. That's about 1951. Kenny Burrell suggested that I study flute, I was playing with him, and I took him up on it. Well at the same time during that period of '50-55, I was also working at Chrysler Motor Company in the daytime, and I'd only take a few hours a semester in the evenings. I studied theory, music theory, oboe, a flute, I took some history courses, some English courses. I studied orchestration, I studied symphonic tone poem there at Williams State. I studied with Mr. Barrell at the Teal School of Music, the Schillinger system of music. I must have acquired maybe 40-something credits, which I transferred to the Manhattan School of Music when I moved to New York.
SH: So you have a pretty thorough classical background.
YL: Yeah, I think so. It's not bad.
SH: You're a modest guy.
YL: Well, you know.
SH: So was Chrysler how you supported yourself financially?
YL: Yes. I had two children and I had to support myself. Because trying to support oneself by music in Detroit during that period, which was the period that they had a recession, I don't know if you heard that term, they didn't call it depression they called it recession.
SH: Right, doesn't scare us so bad, supposedly.
YL: [laughs] Softens it up a bit. I would work three nights on the weekend, $8 a night, $24 a week, that's not enough to support a family. And so I got a day job to make ends meet.
SH: What were you doing at Chrysler?
YL: I did several things. I had one job in the lye tank, which meant that I would take these Chrysler hoods, sometimes the big Imperial hoods, that were scratched after they had been painted and I had to put them down into hot water and lye to strip the paint off of them. That's called the lye tank. Then after that I was transferred to the water deck, where they sand the hoods. The men sand them. But I was the guy who hung them up after they sanded and washed them. Me and my companion would take them off and hang them up on a conveyor, and they would go around to be painted again. And that was my last operation there. I did that for five years from '50 through '55. And then I got this six-night-a-week job playing at a place called Klein's Show Bar, and I couldn't handle the day job and that, so I had to give up the day job.
SH: And then the next year you made your first record as a leader.
YL: That's right.
SH: Was that with your regular group?
YL: Yes. It was with the Klein's group, which consisted of Curtis Fuller, trombone, Hugh Lawson, piano, Ernie Farrow, bass, Louis Hayes, drums. That was the group.
SH: And that group gives some idea of just how amazing the Detroit scene was at that time.
YL: You think the group reflects that? I think in a way, because you know we had, Paul Chambers was there, and Kenny Burrell, Donald Byrd, Roy Brooks, Barry Harris, Frank Foster, Thad Jones, it was quite an environment at that time.
SH: Really. And you continued to play with a lot of these people later on.
YL: Sure, sure.
SH: And Elvin Jones.
YL: That's right, Elvin was there. He'd come down...he was a Pontiac guy.
SH: Doug Watkins.
YL: Doug Watkins was there, I lived a few blocks from Doug then. Two blocks from Paul. It was a wonderful period.
SH: You can definitely stack that period of Detroit up against almost any city, any time.
YL: In a sense you could, yeah.
SH: And you were recording for Savoy and Verve at the same time?
YL: That's right. First it was Savoy, and then I was approached by, you said Prestige didn't you?
SH: Verve. You made one album for Verve.
YL: Yeah, that was the third one.
SH: Which I was lucky enough to find, actually.
YL: It was called Before Dawn? They may have renamed it.
SH: I think they did.
YL: Dizzy oversaw that session if I'm not mistaken. Yeah, I made one for Verve, too, during that period.
SH: And my impression of Savoy was always that they didn't like people recording for other labels at the same time.
YL: Well, they never told me that, you know.
SH: They practically ruined Little Jimmy Scott's career over something like that.
YL: Is that right? He's a great singer, too.
SH: He put a record out on Ray Charles' label and they made Ray Charles recall them all.
YL: Oh, I didn't know that.
SH: Yeah, on Tangerine.
YL: Well, I was freelancing, doing one-shot deals, so they never said that I couldn't record for anyone else. You know Isaac Adina was the A&R person. Oh no, they never said anything to me.
SH: And then, later that year you did start recording for Prestige.
YL: Yeah. That was the second company that approached me. You know, we'd work six nights at Kline's in Detroit. We'd get off Sunday night, jump in the car, we'd be in Hackensack, New Jersey, on Monday at noon, and record, go back that night and start working on Tuesday. And that also happened for Prestige, too. Sometimes we would go into Hackensack, Van Gelder's, he was in Hackensack...[unintelligible]... and record for Prestige. So we recorded for both companies intermittently. Because we had a lot of material, we'd been working six nights a week for five years. We'd rehearse every week, we had a lot of material, so we could do two albums easily in a year.
SH: You did The Phoenix and the Centaur.
YL: Yeah, that was after I moved to New York. Must've been '60. I moved back to New York in '60. And I met Charles Mill, Charles Mills, who composed that album. I did that for Riverside.
SH: He did a couple tracks on there and he wrote for the Cincinnati Symphony, I saw. Just reading the liner notes for that album made me interested, I'd love to know more about him. He sounds like an interesting guy.
YL: I don't know where he is. He was a very interesting man, he could write, he could sit in a park and write a symphony. He also did drawing, ink drawings, that were very exciting. He just disappeared, I don't know where Charles is. But he was a friend and very gifted composer. The Centaur and the Phoenix was a difficult album to record. We had to do it in sections at times, it was so demanding. It was an interesting album.
SH: And that album, I'm not sure if it that was the first one, but I think that's what started your trend of working with foreign pianists. Zawinul, and George Arvanitas, and Mike Nock, I don't know of any others. But just, right there, all of a sudden you've got three guys, that's more than most people. As far as working with foreign pianists and yet being based in the U.S.
YL: Well you know, the way I looked at it, if they could deliver, they're welcome. They were very sensitive players. That's what I needed.
SH: And of course there were also the people like Hugh Lawson and Barry Harris.
YL: And Kenneth Barron.
SH: There was sort of a movement away from using piano players during the '60s, and you stuck with piano players the whole time.
YL: There was, yeah, I know what you're saying. But there were times when I would tell the piano player to stroll. That was the word, you know. You know about strolling. Mulligan was into that, too, and Miles.
SH: Yes, Miles annoyed Monk no end by telling him to lay out.
YL: Yeah, I guess that was a problem, to ask him to lay out. It seems though, well, the piano locks things in to tonality if the pianist is playing chords, you know like G minor to C7 to F major 7 to A flat 7, and it sets up a tonality when the piano is playing that way. And I think many of the single line players, they wanted more freedom, they wanted to be relegated to those kind of chorded systems. And that's why they asked them to stroll, where you just hear, the only melodic instrument you hear is the bass, one tone at a time. Now one can relate to those single tones more freely than one can relate to a chord that's G minor on the piano. And musicians were seeking freedom, you know. And that's one reason they started asking the pianist to stroll. Particularly when they play that way. Had the piano players been playing like, minor seconds, as opposed to chords, they might have welcomed them to continue playing. This is just my thought about it.
SH: One of the songs that is most associated with you is "Sister Mamie." And that's very definitely something where the piano player is not playing on chords.
YL: That's true, it's a multi-key.
SH: The version that I'm familiar with I think is with Mike Nock. Is he on Live at Pep's?
YL: ....I think it is Mike.
SH: Basically, yeah it's modal, but it's more of just a vamp on these notes at the extreme ranges.
YL: Of course.
SH: What always amused me about that is you hear this title "Sister Mamie" and you think oh, it's gonna be something like Horace Silver.
YL: Oh, I see.
SH: You know, that sort of hard-bop, Sister-whatever-the-woman's-name-is...completely different! And yet its still got that feeling, it just doesn't use the structure and the materials.
YL: That's right, it can be gotten different ways, the same feeling. "Sister Mamie" was literally a person, you know, who had a warm, down-to-earth personality. And that's all I wanted to express.
SH: And that was one of the things you played on shenai?
YL: Shenai, correct. In D-minor, yeah.
SH: And then you did move, I guess, you were playing and recording so much in New York that you just moved?
YL: You mean, moved from New York?
SH: Moved to New York?
YL: Oh yeah, well things kind of subsided, ebbed down in Detroit. There was nothing else to do. So I said "better go to New York where most of the music industry is." So in January of '60 I drove to New York and moved into the Bushwick section. I stayed there two years, and I went down to the Showplace and sat in with Mingus, and gave me a job, Eric Dolphy and myself and Rahsaan, and I worked with him, then I worked with Babatundi Olatunji. During '60-61, I did some recordings behind some singers with Ernie Wilkins, I did some recording sessions. And then I moved to Teaneck, across the river. And I moved there, I think the end of '62. And then I got an offer to go with Cannonball in '62. I worked with Cannonball in '62-63. That was my first opportunity to go to Europe, and Japan. In fact I haven't been to Japan since. And then after I left Cannonball I entered school, in the Manhattan School of Music. I went and finished my degree. I entered there in '65. In three years I got my Bachelors in music majoring in flute. And in '69 I enrolled for a Masters in music education, got that in '70. And then I enrolled, I wanted to study something else. So I enrolled in the New School for Social Research, in '70. And I studied philosophy for a year. I studied the pre-Socratics, the Existentialists, symbolic logic, the Pragmatists, for about a year. And then at the end of '70, in '71 I had an offer to enter a doctoral program at the University of Mass in education, so I accepted that. And it was...'72, yeah. And in '75 I got my doctorate in education from the University of Mass.
SH: And education obviously is very important to you.
YL: Yeah, I like education. It's an opportunity to open up vistas for people and for yourself too. I find that teaching makes you learn more. Students ask me things sometimes, you have to go home and figure it out. It makes you do research, and that's another reason I like it. Plus, students teach me things. They look at things differently. And actually, that's what I try to induce in a student. I try to have a student become one who teaches himself something. Then I feel that I've been successful.
SH: Then you in the '80s moved to Nigeria to teach for awhile.
YL: That was in '80, I had this offer. But first I taught, after I got my doctorate in '75 I taught at the Borough of Manhattan Community College for six years, lacking one day, and I liked the job. And I was kind of disappointed because I was lacking one day having tenure, but they let go the whole department, so I went back on the road in '75, about five years playing. My son was born in '75 also, so I took him on the road with me, him and my wife, three months old.
SH: And what's your wife's name?
YL: Tahira. But I said, when he becomes five, and time to go to school, I won't be on the road. So just before he was five I got the offer to teach in Nigeria, to be a senior research fellow in the Center for Nigerian Culture Studies at Amadubela University in Zaire. So I took it, and he was just five so he started staff school there in Nigeria. It was '81. That was an interesting job, very exciting. I had to do research into the Fulani flute, you know the Fulani people are the cattle barons in Nigeria, they raise their cattle throughout Nigeria. They have a flute, it's called a sarewa [sp?], they make it out of wood. In the urban areas they make them out of steel tubing, bicycle pumps. Anyway, these Fulani in the evening when they graze their cattle they sit and they take this twig from a lagouda [sp?] tree and they whittle the flute and they start to play it. So I had to do research into that flute. I had an interpreter. Found out a lot of things about folk medecine and the flute and about marriage and the rituals, the marriage of the Fulani. And part of my research is in a book from the Ministry of Nigerian Cultural Studies....it was written with a colleague who was in drama, his name was Ziggy Kofolola [?], he wrote about drama in Northern Nigeria, I wrote about the instruments and musicians in Northern Nigeria. The book is in the library, the Tower Library in U Mass. And while I was there I wrote a fingering chart for the instrument, which they didn't have before. There are four holes and there are no keys. But the range is larger than the C-flute that we utilize, the Germanic C-flute. And it's amazing how these guys play it, they dance and play at the same time, some of them. So I changed the materials. I left some made of glass, and copper, and changed the shape of it. When I got there they were all shaped cylindrical like this. But I put a bulb like the English horn on the end, and the glass ones had a very silvery, beautiful sound. And I left the fingering chart. That was my main duty, then I had another duty. I had to interact with the African dramatists and musicians. You see, at the center where I taught, they had a year's course for Nigerian Cultural officers who would come down from different emirates and take the courses there for a year. And so my third duty was to teach research methodology. So those were my three duties: to interact with the musicians and dramatists, do research into the Fulani flute, and research methodology, I would teach that to the students. In conjunction the students studied other disciplines like papers and letters, archaeology, photography, African music.
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YL:...the African musicians that were there, they consisted of different ethnic groups like Hausa, Yoruba, Nupe, Mugozawa [sp?]. There are over three hundred different groups in Nigeria...they all worked together there, the musicians. And I found out a lot of things about specifications of rhythms, like each group knew their own rhythms. Like the Lupe, they had certain rhythms and they had certain dance movements. The Lupe people danced like in slow motion, but the Mugozawa were very brisk, you see? Frenetic. And it was interesting to observe this, and I read into it why the musicians in America who are descendants of Africans, why they play differently in terms of descendency. It's just an idea, but I saw this for a fact, you know. It changed my precepts about the organization of composition, too. And one thing, a couple of things happened. Like, they would make xylophones. Now, on our instruments xylophones the lower notes are on the left. But they may have a lower note right in the middle, a higher one here, you know it's a different organization. And they could play them. So they had different concepts of the arrangement of tones.
SH: Oh yeah that's true. I used to have an mbira, and they moved towards the lowest note being in the middle and they'd both go out on the sides.
YL: Yeah, it's exciting isn't it? If you like music enough, it's fascinating.
SH: I remember I retuned it. It wasn't mine, it was this guy's who was sharing the apartment with me. And I retuned it to the octatonic scale that Stravinsky used.
YL: Is that right?
SH: It was a fun thing to do.
YL: Yeah, of course. I had another interesting experience. The director, he wrote some literature which depicted the life of a queen who ruled Northern Nigeria about three hundred years ago. Her name was Queen Amina. And we had to put on presentations for the convocations at the college, and he gave the script to the dramatists and myself, and asked us to write a musical based on this script, of this real-life queen. Now, the history goes, that when she ruled Northern Nigeria all the ethnic groups in the vicinity paid homage to her. The vassals would come and bring gifts, you see, and we had to depict this. So I had to go out into the bush, among these different ethnic groups, and get permission to record their music, and to come back and simulate it in the center. And the Mugozawa's music sounded like "Flying Home," you know? Like Lionel Hampton, it was amazing. [laughs] And sometimes I'd have to recruit musicians and bring them into the center to play there. But anyway, this experience, in this drama, and incidentally we took this drama to Sofia, Bulgaria, where the 28 nations were represented, it's called the Festival of Nations, and that was a grand experience for me, you know. Anyway, in the drama, the queen, someone stabs her and she dies, you see. And then there's a chorus, like in a Greek chorus. There's a chorus over on the side and they sing, to depict the sad aspect of her being killed. So me coming from America, I gave them a minor chord because we look at minor in Western music as sad. So I orchestrated this minor chord for them to sing, humming. And you know what? They kept changing it to consecutive fourths. Like if I'd have C, E flat, and G, it would wind up C, F, B flat. Intuitively they heard consecutive fourths as depicting minor, do you follow me? So that changed my concept, other cultures, they think differently about the implications of sound. And so it came to me that I can prescribe things differently than I've been taught. And I think that's another reason my composition has changed quite a bit. The conception that I don't have to follow given parameters anymore, I can look for other things. That has lots to do with The World at Peace and other things I try to do. That's how we learn, from observation. Because you see Islam teaches that, I mean the Holy Koran says that God gives knowledge to whom he chooses, so that tells me I should observe other people because they are creations of the Creator, and maybe I can learn something, do you follow me? That's the way I look at that.
SH: Adam [Rudolph] said that you have done a fairly large scale book.
YL: Yeah, I have, it's called... I don't have a copy here at this office. Do you play music?
SH: Well, when I'm asked that question by musicians my usual response is to deny everything.
YL: Oh, would you like a copy?
SH: Definitely.
YL: I'll send you one.
SH: I actually have a friend who is a composer who was asking me about the Slonimsky book and he finally found it and he was very disappointed in it.
YL: In Slonimsky? That was one of the first of those kinds of books. It inspired me, of course. I'll send you a copy of it.
SH: Thanks.
YL: You're welcome. Scales and Melodic Patterns.
YL: Adam and I, we're excited about The World at Peace because each time we perform it it takes on unexpected contours, exciting ones, though. Because we're constantly putting our thought and concern into the music. Like we performed it June 20th in Verona, it was different than when we recorded. I wrote some inserts that come in unexpected places, you know, which gives dimensions to the music. It's like looking though songs and you hear other songs, it's exciting.
SH: I have figured out, by the way, that you were destined to record with him.
YL: You did? What, before it happened?
SH: Right. What's the name of your publishing company?
YL: Uh, Farmer Music.
SH: It used to be Alnur.
YL: Well that's the BMI company.
SH: Now, if you do that backwards, Alnur. R U, N, L, A. Now what's that? Rudolph, 'n Lateef.
YL: [laughs] That's interesting! I hadn't noticed that. I have to run that by him. Thanks, I hadn't noticed that before. And I tend to look at some things backward, like this one....R-E-H-T-O-R-B is brother backwards, I got a friend in Germany, he ends his letters Rehtorb Martin, his name is Martin. Rehtorb, that means brother backwards. And Angels is Slegna, backwards. Slegna, is angels.
SH: And didn't you do something called "Sram," Mars backwards?
YL: Yeah, long time ago. "Sram," in 3/2. That was in the '50s, yeah, I did.
SH: Well, I'm going to get back to The World at Peace but I feel like I sort of went off on this tangent of education, we were still back in 1960 and I want to get back to that.
YL: Okay.
SH: Specifically Mingus and the people in that group. There was an article in the Village Voice recently where Ted Curson commented that when you joined Mingus that Mingus said "Oh, none of these robes, none of these robes" and you just looked at him and all of a sudden that was no longer an issue because he just didn't want to argue with you.
YL: You mean clothing?
SH: Right.
YL: Yeah, I heard that story before, I don't remember that at all. I mean, I wore, you know, similar kind of clothes and maybe people had some apprehensions about me, but no one ever said anything to me. So maybe when I wasn't there someone spoke about it. That's the only way I can envision that that came up. Because no one said "Why do you dress that way?" or nothing like that. Do you follow? No one said anything to me, either Mingus or the trumpet player, no one.
SH: Mingus was supposed to be somewhat of an erratic person.
YL: Yeah, people say that. I think he was...he was a very warm person to me. I think he was an eclectic, innovative person. For example, maybe you've read about it before. There was one piece that we were playing of his, and there came a tenor solo, and there were no chords, and I say, "What are the chords?" you know, to the song. He said "I don't want you to know the chords." Instead, there was a drawing of a casket, do you follow? And I'm supposed to take it from there.
SH: Reminds me of some of Anthony Braxton's stuff.
YL: Oh yeah?
SH: All those little cryptograms.
YL: I haven't seen those. I've heard interesting things about him.
SH: And of course Dolphy, and Rahsaan Roland Kirk were in that group.
YL: Dolphy was an innovative person also, able to synthesize music as a result of what I call syncretic mental observations. For example, one night between sets at the Showplace we were outside on the street, I think it was Third Avenue in the Village. And he said "Yusef, you see that building over there?" It was a tall building and there was a light. "See, something's happening there." And then he'd say, "See that one over there? Something else is happening over there." Now that sends a message to me, how he's thinking. And if you listen to his playing, you can hear certain things in one area of the instrument and then, not simultaneously but right after that you hear something happening someplace else and this also happened, you can hear this in John Coltrane's playing. You can hear it going bac