From an early stage Yusef Lateef displayed a restless curiosity that kept him from settling into the role of a conventional bop or hard bop soloist. Disliking the word “jazz,” he regularly produced work that extended or dissolved stylistic borders. A masterful tenor saxophonist whose tone combined warmth with technical command, he stood by the 1950s among the foremost jazz flutists; he also became the most accomplished jazz oboist of his generation, played bassoon from time to time, and brought forward such instruments as the argol, a double clarinet reminiscent of the bassoon, the shanai, an oboe variant, and an assortment of additional flutes. His investigations anticipated what later became known as world music, yet remained more inventive than much of the popular and folk material issued under that heading in the 1990s.
Lateef grew up in Detroit and took up tenor saxophone at seventeen. He worked with Lucky Millinder in 1946, then with Hot Lips Page, Roy Eldridge, and Dizzy Gillespie’s orchestra between 1949 and 1950. During the 1950s he became a steady presence on the Detroit jazz scene while studying flute at Wayne State University. His first recordings as a leader appeared in 1955 on Savoy and continued on Riverside and Prestige, although he did not relocate to New York until 1959. By then he already enjoyed a reputation for versatility and for his readiness to employ miscellaneous instruments. He appeared with Charles Mingus in 1960, performed with Donald Byrd, and received prominent billing in the Cannonball Adderley Sextet from 1962 to 1964. As a leader, his Impulse! sessions of 1963–1966 belong to the strongest portions of his catalog, while the varied Atlantic dates of 1967–1976 also yielded notable passages. In the 1980s he spent time teaching in Nigeria.
His later Atlantic albums approached mood music or new age more closely than jazz, but during the 1990s, recording for his own YAL label, Lateef issued an array of original pieces that included vigorous improvisations with Ricky Ford, Archie Shepp, and Von Freeman. He stayed active as composer, improviser, and educator at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst into the twenty-first century, leading and collaborating on projects such as the 2010 release Towards the Unknown with composer and percussionist Adam Rudolph, the same year he received recognition as a Jazz Master from the National Endowment for the Arts. Yusef Lateef died at his home in Shutesbury, Massachusetts in December 2013 at the age of 93.
