Yusef Lateef: Yusef Lateef’s Detroit Latitude 42° 30’ Longitude 83 ° – album review

Yusef Lateef: Yusef Lateef’s Detroit Latitude 42° 30’ Longitude 83 °

Arc Records

LP

Soft release on 15th April 2023 with vinyl available as part of Record Store Day on 22nd April 2023

For a special reissue on his Arc label, DJ and broadcaster Gilles Peterson has personally selected the magnificent Yusef Lateef’s Detroit Latitude 42° 30’ Longitude 83 °. This 1969 collection of raw funky jazz perfectly captures the intense urban density of the city and the period like few others. Gordon Rutherford hits those mean streets for Louder Than War.

Before you start reading, look up. Up, to the header of this piece. Would you look at that cover art? Oh my days, that is worth the price of admission in itself. Thankfully, this reissue of Yusef Lateef’s masterpiece, Detroit (Latitude 42° 30’ Longitude 83 °), is presented in an exact reproduction of Graffiteria’s original 1969 cover, accompanied by additional sleeve notes written by Dexter Gordon’s widow, Maxine. So stunning is the artwork that it could be hanging in The Louvre. They say you can’t judge a book by its cover, but one look at this beauty and you know exactly what you are buying into, long before the needle even smells the vinyl.

Be assured, these tunes, now re-issued on Gilles Peterson’s Arc Label, are every bit as satisfying as the art. One glance at the visuals will inform you that this is the soundtrack of the streets, captured at a specific moment in time; a musical study of the city it was named after. But this is not a cold, calculating examination. Like Woody Allen’s homages to New York, this is a love story, one that looks beyond the blemishes, focusing on a beauty that only someone truly in love can observe. Every track on Yusef Lateef’s Detroit is a paean to the motor city and the affection that the composer has for his hometown seeps through every groove. Indeed, all seven of the Lateef-composed tracks are named after the city’s landmarks. Not the tourist traps, of course. This is the Detroit of Yusef Lateef, man and boy.

Today, it is commonplace to encounter artists who skilfully employ cross-cultural fusions, but Yusef Lateef, that great pioneering visionary, was bringing Middle Eastern and Asian influences and instruments to his music way back in the early sixties. He introduced non-traditional (in a jazz sense) instruments such as oboe, bassoon, bamboo flute, koto and a plethora of other lesser well-known tools to his trade. Detroit (the album) is awash with these sounds. Lateef’s penchant for his oboes and bassoons gave birth to a unique, distinctive sound; one which was distinct from the profusion of hard-bop albums that were dominating the market at the time. As well as differentiating his work from the artists viewed as his peers, this imagination and creativity allowed Lateef to refuse the definition of jazz for his music. Fascinatingly, The Guardian’s excellent obituary of Lateef, who passed away a couple of days before Christmas in 2013 at the age of 93, advises that Yusef Lateef effectively coined his own genre: autophysiopsychic. This was derived on the basis that it came from the physical, mental and spiritual self.

One spin of Yusef Lateef’s Detroit and you kind of understand that self-invented genre. These tunes may well have their roots in jazz, but they stretch way beyond those boundaries, particularly in terms of the intensity of the rhythms. Thanks largely to the virtuosity of the phenomenal percussionists involved, namely the legendary Ray Barretto, Norman Pride, Albert Heath and Bernard Purdie, this collection is a rhythmic monster; a veritable funky colossus. Just check out the opener, Bishop School. You will struggle to find anything quite so funky this year. Chuck Rainey’s electric bass line blows the door open and is immediately joined by Eric Gale’s wailing, snarling guitar. It’s a blueprint for the funk-soul sound that was to explode in the years immediately following. Moreover, when that string quartet, conducted by William Fischer, sweeps in, the sound becomes bigger than a planet and the scene is set for the cherry on the cake: Lateef’s delicious flute. Hell, the man even finds room to scat over the closing passages.

Throughout Yusef Lateef’s Detroit, riffs abound and Lateef’s melodies are utterly memorable, particularly on the album’s highlight, Eastern Market. Earlier, I spoke about Lateef as a pioneer of cross-cultural music and nowhere is this more evident than on this incredible homage to Detroit’s fruit market where his father had a stall. Lateef’s flute brings an eastern tinge and as the track nears its conclusion it builds momentum like a runaway train. Before you know it, it is relentless, unstoppable, with Lateef emulating his father, rapping out “C’mon now, lemons twenty cents a dozen”. It’s such a warm way to end this terrific tune.

Eastern Market is Detroit’s pinnacle, but it has many challengers for that mantle. Immediately following, introduced by the blur of Rainey’s nimble fingers on the fretboard of his electric bass, comes the sumptuous soulful groove of Belle Isle. Lateef clearly saw the value in such an introduction, because an earlier tune, Livingston Playground, is also spectacularly ushered in by Rainey. The high point of this track however is the incredibly lush, wonderfully warm tenor sax of Lateef. The vibe is like the soundtrack to the brief romantic interlude on any early seventies US cop show.

Turn the disc over and side two offers up another four solid gold bangers. It opens with the smoky, late night, inner-city jazz that is Russell And Eliot. This time around, Lateef’s tenor wails mournfully. However, the guitar’s the star on this one, with Gale blowing our minds with his solo. Then, once again, we change tack as we switch up into Raymond Winchester with its lush Latin rhythms and some mighty weird moans and groans. Penultimate track, Woodward Avenue, is an elegant waltz carried along by Lateef’s dancing flute.

This wonderful collection is brought to a close by something a little different from everything that’s come before. Firstly, That Lucky Old Sun is the only track on the collection that wasn’t composed by Lateef, having been penned by Haven Gillespie and Beasley Smith. It also has a quite different aura to it. Unlike the earlier, uncompromising funk-oriented compositions, this sees Lateef and his band go back to their musical roots. It’s a version of the classic that is firmly entrenched in the mellow camp, with Hugh Lawson’s piano dazzling alongside Lateef’s slow burning tenor.

At the top of this piece, I waxed lyrical about the cover art and celebrated the fact that it had been reproduced identically. That smack of authenticity doesn’t reside solely with the artwork. The music has been remastered from the original analogue master tapes by Grammy award winning engineer Bernie Grundman, who has previously worked with the likes of Steely Dan, Michael Jackson and Prince. We are in the hands of a master and it shows. Close your eyes and you’ll feel like you are partying in 1969.

Yusef Lateef’s Detroit is gritty and dense and straight from the streets. It is a special album and the biggest surprise is that it has cruised under the radar for the last fifty-odd years. For her sleeve notes, Maxine Gordon asked Gilles Peterson why, out of all the records he could have chosen, he picked this one. Peterson lists his reasons, before stating “How this isn’t hailed as an out-and-out classic I have no idea”. Me neither, Gilles, because it is simply brilliant. Every single second of it.

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Arc Records can be found here. They are also on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.

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All words by Gordon Rutherford. More writing by Gordon can be found in his archive.

Gordon is also on Twitter as @R11Gordon. He has a website here: https://thedarkflux.com and is also on Substack.