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REVIEW   DownBeat  /  July 19, 1962


Yusef Lateef
Eastern Sounds

Prestige/Moodsville 22

★★★★

Rudy Van Gelder Remasters


This would be a thoroughly enjoyable collection if only for the virtuoso display by Lateef, whose array of instruments is indeed formidable. Yet, the album is satisfying for deeper reasons.

There is an air of reflective, unhurried calm about the disc, resulting from the quiet assurance of Lateef’s playing and from the unity of his musical conception.

His is a fully realized, wholly personal approach, an effective synthesis of a variety of stylistic sources, not the least of which is the Middle Eastern one, which dominates here, as the title might indicate. Yet there is nothing gratuitous in Lateef’s usage of these Eastern-sounding devices; they form an innate component of his approach and are never used indiscriminately or for the mere evocation of a quasi-exotic feeling. Any “exoticism” that the listener feels he hears results from the restrictive harmonic character of Western music. The odd intervals and the unusual construction of Lateef’s melody lines merely require some getting used to.

There is a charming obliquity, a pleasant warmth and languor to the bulk of the material in this album. A gentle, ruminative mood predominates, which is shattered only by the visceral John Coltrane-delivered tenor work on Snafu and, to a lesser degree, Chinq Miau.

Lateef’s tenor reshaping of Don’t Blame Me is lovely, being fashioned along the lines of Coltrane’s earlier ballad style. It is on tenor, by the way, that Lateef’s approach shows the Eastern influence least (except for the brief use of harmonics at the end of Don’t Blame Me). Like Eric Dolphy, Lateef mines a different vein with each of his instruments.

Barry Harris is a model of grace and limpidity both as accompanist and soloist, and the rhythm support is admirable throughout. —Pete Welding


Eastern Sounds: The Plum Blossom; Blues for the Orient; Ching Miau, Don’t Blame Me; Love Theme from Spartacus; Snafu; Purple Flower; Love Theme from the Robe; The Three Faces of Balal.
Personnel: Lateef, tenor saxophone, oboe, flute, Chinese flute; Barry Harris, piano; Ernie Farrow, bass, rabat; Lex Humphries, drums


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