1964 · Album
Jazz ’Round the World
Recorded 1964 · Riverside · Produced by Orrin Keepnews
Lateef's Global Detour Through Jazz
Yusef Lateef took his flute and oboe on a worldly detour and came back with something lively and open.
Yusef Lateef recorded Jazz 'Round the World in 1964, and the session carries the feel of a bandleader who wanted to stretch the sound of a standard jazz group. The lineup was a small, flexible unit: Hugh Lawson on piano, Richard Williams on trumpet, Lex Humphries on drums, and Lateef himself moving between flute, oboe, and tenor saxophone. That shifting palette of instruments does much of the work, giving the album a loose, exploratory character rather than a conventional hard-bop program.
The music is less about grand statement than about curiosity. Lateef was deeply interested in music from outside the American jazz tradition, and that interest shows up in the way he colors his lines with reed and wind textures that sound different from the usual saxophone-and-trumpet front line. Lawson's piano and Humphries's drumming keep things grounded, so the experiments feel playful rather than academic. It is a record that rewards close listening to how the instruments interact.
As part of Lateef's catalog, this is a good record for a listener who already knows his more famous work and wants to hear him looking outward. It is not the first place most people should start, but it shows a side of him that the more straightforward sessions do not. Recommended for listeners who like jazz that moves a little off the map.
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