Eastern sounds yusef lateef biography

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Detroit-raised flutist, oboe player and tenor saxophonist Bill "Yusef Lateef" Huddleston (1920), who had briefly played with Dizzy Gillespie (1949-50), converted to Islam in the 1950s (as was fashionable in those days) and moved to New York in 1959 to study flute.

By then he had already become a sensation in Detroit in a sextet with trombonist Curtis Fuller (plus piano, bass, drums and percussion), and a pioneer of world-music thanks to his passion for Middle-Eastern and Indian music.

Lateef played tenor, flute, argol (an India double reed wind instrument) and "scraper" on Stable Mates (april 1957), containing his ballad Ameena, and established himself as a sophisticated composer on the twin release Jazz Mood (april 1957), playing flute in the eight-minute introduction, Metaphor, and penning the extended blues meditations Yusef's Mood and Blues in Space as well as the ten-minute exotic-sounding Morning.

Lateef's lyrical post-bop