Rebroadcast August 10, 2020.
Many Jazz fans discovered the music of Yusef Lateef through his work as a sideman with artists like Charles Mingus and Cannonball Adderley. He didn’t look like anyone else and he sure didn’t sound like anyone else: he’s playing an oboe? What’s an arghul? What is this guy all about? He answered these questions with several dozen distinguished albums on most of the leading Jazz labels between the late Fifties and the late Seventies.
Then he seemed to take a tight turn. He moved to Nigeria for several years and then returned to the US in the mid-Eighties, leading a second career as an educator. But he never stopped making music, releasing nearly as many records— now on his own YAL label—as he did in his early years. This second career stretched on longer then the first, ending with his death in 2013, but remains largely unknown to the wider public.
Throughout this second career, among his closest collaborators was percussionist and bandleader Adam Rudolph. Adam will share personal stories and first-hand insights from his years with this master musician.
photo credit: Tom Beetz / CC BY-SA (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0)