CoronaVinyl Day 446 (L): The Complete Yusef Lateef by Yusef Lateef

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Today's CoronaVinyl category is "L," and I discovered today that I have not one, but two, albums by jazz multi-instrumentalist Yusef Lateef, so I went with his 1968 album The Complete Yusef Lateef.

Admittedly, I knew essentially nothing about Lateef before today.  I have no idea when or where I acquired his albums -- though presumably they were part of a larger lot of records I bought at some point -- and I didn't even know what genre of music he played.  As with many of the artists I've discovered during the last three years of CoronaVinyl, it was nice learning about yet another musician.

Lateef -- who was born William Huddleston twenty years to the day before John Lennon was born -- was playing saxophone with jazz bands in Detroit by the time he was in high school, and he parlayed that into a touring gig as part of Dizzy Gillespie's band, before returning to Detroit when he was nearly 30 to go to college at Wayne State, studying musical composition.

In the late '50s, he began a prolific career, releasing his first album in 1957 -- when he was already 36.  Over the course of the following 55 years, he would release nearly 80 albums as a solo artist, as well as six albums with Cannonball Adderley and albums or songs with other artists.  And on top of that, he found time in his 40s and 50s to get a second bachelor's degree in music, a masters in music education, and an Ed.D.  He was also a professor at the Manhattan School of Music, the Borough of Manhattan Community College, the University of Massachusetts, and Hampshire College.

The Complete Yusef Lateef is not a retrospective or compilation, but just the title of an album.  It's what I would consider a pretty standard jazz album from that era, and it reminds me a lot of John Coltrane -- probably because one of the instruments prominently featured is the tenor sax.  In addition, Lateef plays the alto sax, flute, and oboe, and he sings the vocals on the only non-instrumental track.  I used to listen to a lot of jazz while studying because there were no words to distract me, so this was a good album to listen to while I worked.  The only problem is that, because there are no words (save for one track), I kind of drowned it out and had to listen to the album a few times to distinguish between songs.

Anywho, Lateef continued making music until shortly before his death in 2013 at the ripe old age of 93.

Favorite Song on Side 1:  "Kongsberg"
This one is kind of an uptempo ditty that features Lateef's flowing tenor sax.

Favorite Song on Side 2:  "See Line Woman"
Lateef's jazz instrumental reworking of this traditional African American folk song is a peppy rendition that makes you want to go out walking or something.