Yusef Said…
Close encounters with the Legendary Jazz Man - And Happy Celestial Birthday Dr. Lateef!
Yusef Said…
Years ago, the lovely painter Marilyn Cvitanic, my “More-Than-Wife,” (as we are not legally married, I call her my MTW) and I attended a rare performance by Dr. Yusef Lateef at the Knitting Factory. He spent much of the set, in deep concentration, playing the piano. The music was rather ethereal and reminded me at times of Erik Satie’s work (the more meditative than jokey stuff). While improvising Yusef left these great gaping silences and then filled the holes with perfectly chosen notes that would drift across the room and slowly disperse in the air. At one point, Marilyn leaned over and whispered, “I think he’s having a conversation with God.”
Following the concert, in which Lateef also played some beautiful flute, we bumped into Yusef’s old producer from his Atlantic days, Joel Dorn. He was headed backstage and took us with him to meet the good Doctor.
(Joel Dorn - photo by Marilyn Cvitanic)
After nearly thirty years of listening to his music and interviewing him on the phone, I was suddenly face to face with the great man, shaking his rather large hand. His handshake was strong of course and went on longer than expected.
We spoke for a moment about the distinctive tone of Fulani flutes as he continued pumping my hand, while at the same time sizing me up with an inscrutable gaze. Upon finally releasing my hand, he bowed to Marilyn (Dr. Lateef preferred to bow to ladies rather than shake hands with them) and then looked down into the windows of my soul for a brief slice of eternity and said, “Now take care of her.” And from that day on Marilyn has held the wild card in our relationship.
If it’s cold and raining and there’s nothing in the fridge and it’s nearly 8PM and we haven’t had dinner yet, she’ll look at me with those sky blue eyes of hers and say, “Honey, would you run down to the Hong Kong for some take out?” And if I dare to protest due to a heatwave or blizzard, she would pull out the heavy artillery: “But Yusef said!”
Oh, I guess this piece is a bit short… so here’s a little dessert… from the time I tested Hal Willner for Wire Magazine’s Invisible Jukebox. The first song I played him was “In A Little Spanish Town” from Yusef’s The Doctor Is In and Out (Atlantic) 1976…
Willner: Okay, that’s “In A Little Spanish Town” by Yusef Lateef from The Doctor Is In and Out. Side two, last cut. But it’s not fair. I was in the room when he cut it. It was 1975 or ’76. It was an unbelievable record and I was just starting as Joel Dorn’s assistant. It was all Joel’s idea. He had this record of “In A Little Spanish Town.” Yusef just smiled and took an alto and played two tracks to it and that was that. Before the record begins, Joel put on Sherlock Holmes’ voice from The Hounds of the Baskervilles, saying “Watson, the needle!”
JK: Joel was so innovative and a real prankster. His sense of humor was always a big part of what he did. I can hear his influence on a lot of your work, like the Mingus album [Weird Nightmare].
Willner: One of the reasons he took me on was because of my love of Yusef’s album Part of the Search. It came out at the same time as Rahsaan Roland Kirk’s Prepare Thyself to Deal With A Miracle and Les McCann’s Layers. You’ve got to remember how much the jazz critics hated those records. Joel was taking jazz and combining it with the art form that recording had become as opposed to, say the Alfred Lion/Blue Note technique. He was making Satanic Majesty’s Request in comparison. Both Yusef and Joel were into surrealism. In Joel’s relationship with his artists the word “no” just didn’t exist. I thought this was the way the world was but unfortunately I was witnessing the end of an era. I was really fortunate to have been there.
(Hal Willner in his NYC studio - photo by John Kruth)