An Interview With Yusef Lateef

SUN: I know you carne from Chattanooga, Tennessee, originally. When did you come to Detroit?
YUSEF: In 1925.
SUN: So you were . . .
YUSEF: Five years old.
SUN: Who or what was your inspiration?
YUSEF: My father and mother. My mother played piano and my father sang. Not professionally, you know, but they were marvelous musicians. The first band I played with was a high school band here in Detroit. It was called Massy Rucker and the 13 Spirits of Swing, out of Miller High School. In 1939 we went on a tour through the United States- we left high school and toured, primarily the south, for a whole year, under the leadership of Harvey Toots- he's dead now. Then we returned and finished high school in '41, at Miller High. It's Miller ]r. High School now.
SUN: We've run into any number of musicians who went to Miller High School . . .
YUSEF: Yeah, Milt Jackson was in the same music class that I was. Kenny Burrell's brother, Billy Burrell, was in school with me also. Kenny was younger than I was. He went to Miller after I had left. Let's see, who else was there? Of course there was a tenor player maybe you have never heard of, Lorenzo Lawson.
SUN: I've heard the name.
YUSEF: He was a great tenor saxophonist. He was scheduled to go with Count Basie when Lester Young left, but he wouldn't leave Detroit. He died shortly after. There was a very healthy musical atmosphere at Miller. We had a teacher named Cabara who used to get music from Spain. His father was a musician who lived in Spain. He played various kinds of music. He introduced Spanish music, and it was again a musical experience for us in high school. We had what they called a dance band, and we played the various schools for dances. We played at Pershing, Cass, etc.
SUN: So you were touring early. When was your first professional work?
YUSEF: Of course I played in various bars in Detroit. The first bar I played at was called the Ace High Bar on Hastings Street. I would alternate between Rucker's band and this job in the little bar as a pianist. I had only been playing a year, and we played the Mirror Ballroom, jobs over in Polish neighborhoods, polkas, Uncle Tom's Cabin on Eight Mile Road, you name it.
SUN: After going out with Dizzy Gillespie- you played with him about a year?
YUSEF: Two years.
SUN: You came back to the city . . .
YUSEF: I came back in 1950. That's when I started taking courses at Wayne State. I left here in '60 and went to New York to live. I've been living in that area ever since.
SUN: Eastern music has been an influence on your own music for a long time. Did you get exposed to that from visiting the Orient?
YUSEF: No, through the library. You can hear music from around the world in our libraries, you know. I spent much time in the Detroit Public Library listening to music from various countries, and also reading books about music from various countries- not only music of the East but music of Europe also. I've been to Europe and I've also been to Japan and North Africa, and of course I've had those influences.
SUN: You say you're based in New York. Do you travel much outside the country or outside the New York area?
YUSEF: The last six years I've been teaching in New York, at Manhattan Community College. I teach September through May. We travel during June, July and half of August. In 1972 we went to Europe during those 2-1/2 months. In '73, '74, 75 and this year we've just traveled in the States. We've been to California, we spent about 6 weeks on the West Coast, Seattle, San Francisco, Los Angeles and then back to the East Coast. By that time it's August 15, and then I go back to teaching after Labor

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YUSEF LATEEF

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Day.
SUN: What are your plans for the future?
YUSEF: I plan to continue teaching, I'd like to publish my doctoral dissertation. I'd like to publish some more of the music which I've been doing for the last 10 - 15 years. I'd like to publish some short stories that I've been writing. Those are some of my immediate plans. I intend to do some continued studying.
SUN: I've got a number of your albums going back to Savoy, Prestige, Riverside, Impulse and Atlantic, and it seems like your material always keeps growing. Your contemporaries on the jazz scene- it seems to us that you should be as well-known as Miles and Herbie Hancock and people like that.
YUSEF: I'm able to keep at it. Great popularity - that's not what I'm searching for. I'm just involved in my music and I'm dedicated to it. That's why I work at it. Now, if I was interesting in being, what they call it, a big superstar, I'd have to be involved in getting the media to sell it or something. It's been proven that you can sell things to the media, I'm not involved in that; that would take my image away from my music and other things I'm trying to do. I'm not trying to expedite selling; I mean, that's the record company's problem, that's their job.
SUN: Do you think if you were in a position where your music was promoted and sold, would that hamper you in any way?
YUSEF: No, it wouldn't hamper me. If someone wants to put a million dollars behind it, that's okay with me. But I'm not going to expend my energy thinking about selling. My job is to produce and, of Course, I'll put some energy into trying to promote it. I'll go on the radio, etc. or talk to you, but I'm not going to go off the deep end on that. I mean I can't spend 16 hours a day running to radio stations and not practice - I get on the bandstand and I can't play anything. When you play instruments, you have to stay with them. You must practice. At least I have to.
SUN: You practice every day?
YUSEF: Yeah. As much as I can.
SUN: How about your new Lp?
YUSEF: It's called The Doctor Is In . . . And Out, and it's an interaction with the fact that I received my doctorate in education this past September. You know about the "in" and "out" concept of playing music, don't you? "Out" is outside of the structure, and "in" is playing within the structure. That's one way to look at it.
SUN: Is there anything you'd like to add?
YUSEF: Well, I don't play jazz-in case you've heard that's what I play. The term "jazz" is an ambiguous term, and it's derogatory by some definitions. The Random House dictionary, the first entry in the 1972 edition defines the term as "to copulate," which has nothing to do with music. The Webster Dictionary on Americanisms defines it as that which is discordant and noisy. That has nothing to do with music. Therefore that term doesn't apply to my music, and it doesn't apply to me. The term that I coined is auto-physio-psychic music-it means music that comes from the mental, physical and spiritual self. A great deal of it is improvised - that's what auto-physio-psychic means - a great deal of it is improvised.
SUN: Well, we certainly enjoy it.
YUSEF: Thank you.

YUSEF LATEEF:
A SELECTED DISCOGRAPHY

Del mark Records, (early 50's)
Yusef Lateef Quintet (with Donald Byrd)
Verve Records (1957)
Before Dawn
Savoy Records (1957-58)
Jazz Moods - Jazz For The Thinker -
Stablemates - Prayer To The East Jazz & The Sounds of Nature The Dreamer - The Fabric of Jazz
Prestige/New Jazz (1958-60)
Eastern Sounds Soulnik (with Doug Watkins)
Cry ! Tender - Into Something! - Blues For The Orient - Expression! 
Argo/Chess Records (1959)
Lateef at Cranbrook
Mercury Records (1960)
Pre-Bird (with the Charles Mingus Orchestra)
Riverside Records (1960-63)
The Three Faces of Yusef Lateef - The Centaur and The Phoenix - Cannonball Adderley Sextet in New York - Jazz Workshop Revisited
Charlie Parker Records (1963)
Yusef Lateef Quintet
ABC/Impulse Records (1963-68)
Jazz 'Round The World - Live at Pep's 1984 Psychicemotus - A Flat, G Flat & C - The Golden Flute Club Date
Atlantic Records (1968-1976)
The Complete Yusef Lateef - Yusef Lateef's Detroit - - Blue Yusef - The Best of Yusef Lateef - Gentle Giant - Hush N' Thunder - Part of The Search - Ten Years Hence - The Doctor Is In ... And Out