Yusef Lateef - Beautiful Flowers CD : Release Information

Yusef Lateef - Beautiful Flowers. CD. (Five Four - FIVEFOUR4) It's hard to believe that at the time of release (2005) the music on this excellent CD was nearly fifty years old, and that its creator is 85 at the time of writing. But then again, Yusef Lateef (real name Bill Evans- no relation to either of the others) was always like that: a visionary, years ahead of his time, a complete iconoclast, refusing to be bound by the strictures of jazz or any other genre. Not dying young and having spiritual rather than political inclinations has robbed him of the acclaim that the tastemakers bestow upon Coltrane, Kirk, Ayler or Dolphy- (not to mention making some dodgy disco albums in the 70s-Ed) but Lateef's talent (on tenor, soprano, flute, oboe, shenai and other instruments one can't even pronounce) is easily the equal of all those and more. The tracks here, which range from standards ('Lover Man') to other great jazzers' compositions ('Night In Tunisia') and sveral inspired originals ('Blues In Space' 'Metaphor') are taken from the 1957 Savoy albums 'Jazz Moods' and 'Prayer To The East' which established his reputation as a master, led the likes of Miles Davis and the Coltranes toward exploring Eastern modal scales in jazz, and are still timeless and beyond classification. Musical history being made before your very ears, and only 8 and a half quid.

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