Yusef Lateef

CD version. The Blue Yusef Lateef was recorded at RCA's New York studios on 23 and 24 April 1968 and released by Atlantic that summer. It treats the blues as a wide field rather than a fixed form. Yusef Lateef plays tenor saxophone and flute, but also pneumatic and bamboo flutes, an instrument credited as shannie, tamboura, Taiwanese koto and a scratcher. Producer Joel Dorn gave him a large cast, with a string quartet and a vocal group on some tracks. The album moves from gospel and barrelhouse piano to Asian colours and Latin grooves, and the blues remains the common ground throughout.

Around Lateef are Blue Mitchell on trumpet, Sonny Red on alto, Kenny Burrell on guitar, Buddy Lucas on harmonica and Hugh Lawson on piano. Roy Brooks plays drums, and there are two bassists, Cecil McBee on acoustic and Bob Cranshaw on Fender bass. Juba Juba opens on a slow, African-inflected groove led by Lateef's woody flute, with wordless female voices and Lucas's wailing harmonica. Like It Is sets a string quartet against a hypnotic vamp, with Lateef on scratcher and flute before his tenor enters with a hard, keening edge. Othelia is a straight, driving blues with barrelhouse piano and raw harmonica. On Back Home the tenor trades calls and responses with Lucas while Mitchell shadows the line. Moon Cup puts the koto in front, Six Miles Next Door belongs to Burrell's electric guitar, and Sun Dog closes on a Latin feel. Lawson wrote Get Over, Get Off And Get On, Lateef the rest, and Lateef also wrote the original liner notes, with cover art by Stanislaw Zagorski. Reviewing a vinyl reissue for London Jazz News in 2014, Andrew Cartmel called it a standout album and one of Lateef's very best. The Penguin Guide to Jazz Recordings gave it three stars out of four in 2008.

This remastered Music On CD edition (MOCCD14421, 2024) adds the previously unissued DB Blues. It was recorded at Regent Sound Studios in New York in 1976 with Kenny Barron, Bob Cunningham and Albert Heath.