Yusef Lateef - Lateef at Cranbrook
Released 1958
Recording and Session Information
April 8 1958, Cranbrook Academy of Art, Detroit
Yusef Lateef, tenor saxophone, flute, oboe, argol, percussion; Frank Morelli, baritone saxophone; Terry Pollard, piano; William Austin, bass, rebab; Frank Gant, drums, gong, finger cymbals
8829 Brazil
8830 Brother
8831 Shadrack
8832 Let Every Soul Say Amen
8833 Shaw 'Nuff
8834 Oscalypso
8835 Morning
8836 G.K. Blues
Woody'N You
Track Listing
| Morning | Yusef Lateef | April 8 1958 |
| Brazil | Ary Barroso | April 8 1958 |
| Let Every Soul Say Amen | Yusef Lateef | April 8 1958 |
| Woody'N You | Dizzy Gillespie | April 8 1958 |
Liner Notes
This is a record of a unique concert at Cranbrook Academy of Art on April 9, 1958. Cranbrook has been in existence since 1927 and one of the tenets of its teaching is that all arts are interrelated, especially with life. Among Cranbrook graduates have been architect Erro Saarinen; sculptor Harry Bertoia who is also known for the Diamond Chair; and inventive furniture designers Charles Ames and Florence Knoll.
The April concert marked the first time jazz was offcially presented at the school. The idea began with the students who delegated three of their number to contact Yusef. Yusef and his group visited the school, were impressed, and the concert was arranged. It was held in the right wing of the Cranbrook galleries with no admission charge. An overflow crowd of some 500 attended (Cranbrook is about 15 miles north of Detroit).
Most of the audience sat on floor mats. Around them were student paintings and rising among them were pieces of sculpture. Looking down, the scene was like a chess board from
Through The Looking Glass. Visually, the interrelation of arts had taken place as if spontaneously, and the music added a further aural dimension.
The introduction to the concert was given by Wallace Mitchell who is in charge of the galleries and is Registrar of Cranbrook Academy of Art. He was the liaison between the faculty and the students in preparing the concert. The musicians were moved from the start at the receptivity of the audience and the fact that they appeared open to unexpected conceptions. They were not afflicted with what one composer has called "jazz imperatives" — preset definitions of what jazz has to be.
Yusef's group on this record has been with him some eight months at Klein's Showbar on 12th Street in Detroit where Yusef himself has been playing two and a half years. Yusef was born in Chattanooga, Tennessee, in 1920; moved to Detroit with his parents five years later. He began on alto, switched to tenor the next year, and by 1946, through an introduction by Lucky Thompson, he had joined Lucky Millinder's band. He worked with Dizzy Gillespie's band (he was then Bill Evans) in 1949. Yusef has been back in Detroit since 1930 and has been a leader since 1955. He now plays, among other instruments, tenor, flute, tambourine, gourd, and various eastern and
near eastern wind instruments like the arghool.
Lithe Terry Pollard, who swings unerringly, was born in Detroit August 15, 1931. She's worked with Johnny Hill, the Emmit Slay trio, Billy Mitchell, and for several years on vibes as well as piano with Terry Gibbs. She returned to Detroit, played for a time with Sonny Stitt, but was largely inactive in music until joining Yusef about eight months ago. "After four years of nervous music," she says, "I had to get used to being relaxed with Yusef. I don't have to jump up and down all the time any more." Terry's feeling about Yusef's fusion of musical elements from other cultures with jazz is that "it's like making soup. The more things you throw in — if you know what you're doing — the better it is. Working with Yusef, you never get into a rut. We play real good funky blues; rhythms in 7/4, 5/4, and waltz times; and so many other things are also going on. And yet it's all relaxed."
Bassist William Austin was born in St. Louis on February 22, 1932. He played baritone saxophone for about four years, but taught himself bass while in the Air Force. He's worked with Barry Harris as well as Yusef and recorded with Sonny Stitt. Like Terry, he finds working with Yusef challenging because "his music has a different feel to it and there's always something else going on." With Yusef he doubles on the one-string rebab (the term generically is used for a family of string instruments, usually found in Moslem countries). It's played by harmonics, being tuned to whatever key the piece is in. Yusef describes some of its history in the introduction to
Morning.
Baritone saxophonist Frank Morelli was born in Detroit, March 7, 1933. He began on alto at 14, switched to tenor, and finally took up baritone in 1953. He worked with Jimmy Palmer's orchestra out of Chicago and has been with Yusef since the beginning of the year. He feels attracted to Yusef's music because "it's soulful; always relaxed in whatever tempo it's played; and Yusef never plays any wasted notes."
Drummer Frank Gant was born in Detroit, May 26, 1931. He began on drums after high school, has been a professional since 1952, and has worked with Alvin Jackson, Barry Harris and the Terry Pollard trio. You can hear him here on a Chinese gong some 10 inches in diameter. He also plays bells and finger cymbals and earth-board although the last isn't heard in this album.
Yusef's
Morning, he points out, "is a 16-bar structure; six bars based on F minor 7; 2 bars on G7; and eight on F minor 7. It came to me in the morning; I began singing it every day; and I finally wrote it down.
What impresses me here is how naturally the other musicians fall into the near-eastern rhythmic and tonal feel of the piece without losing their jazz identities and swing. Yusef's reason for adding these elements is that he wearied of "playing
I Got Rhythm and such things with the same sound and the same time. I want to expand the range of colors and rhythms in jazz. To do that, you naturally have to use some of the instruments — like the rebab 'and various percussion aids — from other cultures. There's no reason though why they can't blend together."
Note, incidentally, how unforcedly Terry Pollard's piano flows in the idiom of this piece. With Yusef interested in the near east; Miles Davis in scales from anywhere he can find them, including the folk scales used by Khachaturian; and Cecil Taylor in the color possibilities of Bali and India, it may well be that no music will be found immune to fusion with jazz in the years ahead. The only caution is that these elements ought not be grafted on from without, but should be balanced as an organic part of each player's or writer's individual self-expression. The basic point is there is no reason why these meetings cannot happen — as they have before in jazz history, from Jelly Roll Morton's "Spanish tinge" and beyond.
Brazil is in 5/4 time, and is another challenge Yusef sets himself and his players, not as an exercise but because he felt this rhythmic pattern best suited the feeling he wanted from this tune. The arghool is heard at the beginning. After an introduction by Yusef, the group plays Yusef's
Let Every Soul Say Amen, a serene, almost impressionistic piece, although it is colored, as is characteristic of Yusef, wwith eastern textures. "It's in a free form," explains Yusef, "and every time we play it, it sounds different. It's built around A minor sixth and inversions of it."
Woody n' You> is Dizzy Gillespie's, and Yusef's version provides a loose framework for extended improvisation by all, especially Yusef, That's also Yusef in the intriguingly multi-colored polyrhythmic percussion sections scraping a kind of rams' head (it looks like an open powder horn) with a penny.
In the Cranbrook catalogue, there is this description of how an architect should function: "Architecture is a social as well as an organic art form. Since cultural activities can achieve fullest maturity only in a culturally sound environment, the architect must assume responsibility for planning such an environment. He must expand his concept of shelter to include all the form-world, from the intimacy of the room to the comprehensiveness of the metropolis. Conditioned by this basic approach, the student learns through personal research and individual expression..."
Substitute "musician" for "architect" and you'll have an idea of what motivates Yusef's approach to music.
NAT HENTOFF
Co-editor
The Jazz Review
