Search - Yusef Lateef :: Lost in Sound

Untypical session for Yusef in 1961

Bomojaz | South Central PA, USA | 12/02/2005

(5 out of 5 stars)

"I've always wondered about this 1961 session, originally on the Charlie Parker label. First of all, who are these guys? This is the only record that the trumpeter Vincent Pitts ever appeared on (he's not bad, either, a product of the hard bop school who sounds as if he could hold his own with Lee Morgan or Freddie Hubbard). Pianist John Harmon (misspelled on the tray card) made a few recordings subsequent to this one, mainly in Wisconsin, playing electric piano and synthesizer. Bassist Ray McKinney was on a handful of LPs, most famously with Charles McPherson once on Prestige. Only drummer Clifford Jarvis has gone on to a career at least well-represented on record. None of them ever recorded with Yusef again.



Secondly, the music played here is somewhat anomalous to the music Lateef was producing in 1961, which incorporated unusual instruments such as the argol, shenai, and oboe, and compositions to go along with them, many showing Asian or African components. The music on this CD is straight-ahead hard bop and Yusef plays only tenor sax. So this CD is a mystery (it's also been reissued a number of times on LP, sometimes on bootlegs).



But the music is excellent. In some instances, on BLUE ROCKY and TRUDY'S DELIGHT, for example, the group is the spitting image of Horace Silver's group of the time: both tunes are funky and in a minor mode, and Jarvis's drumming is very similar to Louis Hayes or Roy Brooks. The two blues pieces OUTSIDE BLUES and SOUL BLUES are taken up-tempo and have fine solos by Lateef and Pitts. Two Bird compositions are included (BIG FOOT and DEXTERITY): both are done medium to medium-up, and both spotlight the front men nicely. (Pitts plays too well to have just disappeared off the scene.) A month after this date was made Lateef would be back in the studios for Prestige with the flute and the oboe, recording tunes like THREE FACES OF BALAL and CHING MIAU. This is a nice respite from that and worth checking out.

"