Billboard : 02/24/1958
Two stars

On majority of titles here, Lateef and his colleagues attempt to “effect a fusion between Eastern music and mainstream-modern jazz”; on the other tunes, the recipe is straight-forward modern jazz. The degree of success in former category is debatable, tho Meditation is quite gratifying. Lateef is an excellent flutist; Wilbur Harden, a promising sound on flugelhorn. In essence, a generally interesting set that could strike buyer’s fancy on strength of the “straight” jazz; the variety of sounds and effects utilized by this rather “different” unit.

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Audio
Charles A. Robertson : April, 1958

Of the odd instruments and sounds being introduced into jazz, no group is more productive than that gathered in Detroit about Yusef Lateef. In effecting a fusion with Eastern music, the leader has extended an early allegiance to the tenor sax to both the conventional flute and Indian reed flutes. When these fail to fulfill his demands, he resorts to humming his choruses in the manner of a distant Moslem chant. All the members of his quintet also double on strange instruments. Wilbur Harden on flugelhorn uses an inflated balloon for melodic and rhythmic accents. Pianist Hugh Lawson is another balloonist, besides playing a pop bottle. bells, and Turkish cymbals. Bassist Ernie Farrow employs the one-stringed Rabat, and drummer Oliver Jackson uses an Earth-board and Chinese gong.

Lateef’s compositions are built around Eastern themes and are best represented by the harmonic and metric variations of Love And Humor, and the plaintive Meditation. By switching to tenor sax on Buckingham, he relates it more closely to American jazz. Harden contributes Playful Flute, prefaced by Lateef with the sound of a scraper. After this, an unusual, treatment of Take The A Train, almost seems conventional. Few musicians pass through Detroit without hearing the unit in person, but a clean-cut recording by Rudy Van Gelder brings it closer to home.

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High Fidelity
O.B. Brummell : April, 1958

Lateef’s fascination with the exotic is carried to wondrous extremes on a delightful tour de force in The Sounds of Yusef. Love and Humor, he calls it, and it may be the start of a Villa-Lobos influence on jazz. The piece is concocted largely of bird cries produced by the manipulation of two balloons (one balloonist works in a gusty George Brunis style), while under this a Seven-Up bottle huffs out the earth-root sound of the primitive jug bands. Lateef’s flute floats through this controlled pandemonium with fey fluency. Strangely enough, it all seems to swing. Aside from an elegantly dejected bit of brooding, Meditation, Lateef’s other offerings on this disc are routine – for him.

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Metronome
Bill Coss : July, 1958

The Sounds of Lateef are American jazz sounds coupled with the introduction of the sounds and instruments of the Middle and Far East (as you will have noted in the separate personnel listing). The Train track is the only strictly American jazz performance and its main deviation from the usual is in Yusef’s singing while playing the flute (a trick which was first recorded by Sam Most, I believe). The remaining tracks have varying amounts of the Eastern sounds and other variants including air escaping from a balloon and the old, time-honored bit of jug blowing, using a Seven-Up bottle in this case. It all adds up to some interesting experiences, not without some too obvious gimmickry and there seems to me, too, more of a superimposition of an Eastern melody on top of something representing jazz played on strange instruments, than there is of real amalgamation of the two musics. However, that is a criticism, not a condemnation, and you may find great pleasure in the minor keys and moods. Obviously enough, this is hard bop only in brief parts, but the musicians, though other-trained, are from that groove essentially. For the rest, each plays excellently and one of the major charms about this album is the obvious amount of care and preparation and togetherness which went into its making.

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Miami Herald
Fred Sherman : 08/10/1958

Sounds of Yusef presents the Yusef Lateef quintet, a Detroit group that swings on a pendulum that reaches to the back streets of India. The off-beat album opens with a steaming version of Ellington’s Take the “A” Train. It’s good straight jazz. Then the group sails off into a never-never mystic land of Turkish finger cymbals, tambourines, Chinese gongs, earthboards, rabats, balloons, bells and a Seven Up bottle. Did you ever hear jazz played by air escaping from a balloon? It gets pretty silly at times. I prefer Lateef with the tenor sax or flute with a Detroit beat. You might try this for smiles.

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Pittsburgh Courier
Harold L. Keith : 03/08/1958

Jazz is perhaps the broadest avenue down which the musician can parade his initiative and enthusiasm.

All other forms of music are hidebound by the dictates of conformity and restricted to cut and dried standards of tradition and folkways. Those artists who adhere to the jazz Idiom are correspondingly dedicated and inspired, constantly searching for new Ideas and new challenges.

Consequently, Yusef Lateef’s cutting on Prestige deserves more than mere passing mention, for he has stepped aside from conventionality with such assuredness that his confidence in the product reaches out and sweeps In the listener.

Yusef has utilized such avante garde “instruments” as tambourine, balloon, Turkish finger symbals, bells, Seven-Up bottle, rabat, Chinese gong and earth-board to produce sounds ranging from the more conventional Take the A Train to the in Orientale Love and Humor.

With Yusef are Wilbur Harden, playing the fluegelhorn; Hugh Lawson, piano; Ernie Farrow, bass; and Oliver Jackson, drums. Among the items presented are Meditation, a pregnant thing which is most unusual from the standpoint of its moody composition; Buckingham, a Joyful bouncing item which shows off Harden’s talent; and Playful Flute, strictly out of the Western world. This is a must disc.

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Down Beat : 05/29/1958
Don Gold : 3 stars

Lateef’s Detroit-and-all-points-east sounds include, in addition to those of conventional instruments, sounds produced by using a coin on a scraper, by rubbing the surface of a balloon or allowing air to escape an inflated balloon, by “blowing” a Seven Up bottle, and by playing the one-stringed Rahat, the three-wire wooden Earth-board, and the Argol, an Indian reed flute. Along the way, tambourine, finger cymbals, bells, ocarina, and Chinese gong are introduced for special effects.

Much of this is more of anthropological interest than of jazz significance, although even this cannot be said of the balloon and Seven Up bottle.

Operating on familiar instruments, the Detroiters play in inspired fashion. On the Prestige LP, two tracks out of five are obviously jazz-based – Train and Lateef’s Buckingham. These tracks are the most effective, although Lateef’s efforts to play the flute and hum wordless phrases simultaneously will not endear him to purists. Lawson and Harden play well and Farrow and Jackson support quite intelligently. But the more Eastern the music becomes, the more eccentric and less effective it becomes. Love and Humor is one such eccentric moment preserved.

Balloons and bottles, it seems to me, are devices best left to Spike Jones.

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Liner Notes by Ira Gitler

Once when writing about Swedish baritone saxophonist Lars Gullin, I remarked that “the world is getting smaller” was being borne out by the brand of modern jazz that the swinging Swedes were playing. This was in 1954. In 1958 the world is even smaller and not only because of the increase in the speed of airplanes and the advent of rockets. It is the exchange of cultural products which is helping the shrinking process.

Not only are more Europeans playing and hearing more American jazz than ever before but the peoples of continental Asia and the islands of Japan are being exposed to the music via recordings and personal tours; many for the first time. That the music indigenous to these Eastern countries should, in turn, interest our traveling musicians is quite logical. After all, European music, harmonically and instrumentally, is not new to jazz.

Dizzy Gillespie, who toured the near and middle East during 1956, has been quoted on the inevitability of the eventual use of Indian scales in jazz. In New York, in the same year, an Indian drummer named Chatur Lal sat in with American jazzmen on a television program with his native Tabla.

While all this was going on, a Detroit musician, who had never been to Asia but who had embraced the Moslem faith with a resultant interest in Asiatic culture, was experimenting in his compositions and instrumentation for same, Tenor-man, flutist Yusef Lateef, heard with Dizzy Gillespie in the late Forties and also, at various times, with “Hot Lips” Page, Roy Eldridge and Miles Davis, introduced into his own group, instruments which were foreign to jazz, foreign, indeed, to the United States and effected provocative fusions between Eastern music and mainstream-modern jazz. Most of these innovations have occurred in the area of sound but there have been harmonic, melodic and metric variants too.

Lateef, who studied composition and flute at Wayne State University has written most of his group’s book. Three of his compositions, Love And Humor, Buckingham and Meditation, comprise the second side of this album. His tenor playing stems from Stitt, Rollins and, perhaps, more so, Wardell Gray but is singular nevertheless with his own acute sense of beauty inherently strong. I confess that I have never enjoyed the flute in jazz, to the utmost, until I heard Yusef’s full-blown conception.

In addition to the more conventional instruments, Yusef also plays two Indian reed flutes. One is high-pitched; the other, called the Argol, has more of an English horn timbre and can be heard on Meditation. At the onset of Playful Flute you will hear the Scraper as played by Lateef with the aid of a coin.

Wilbur Harden, the fluegelhornist, was born in Birmingham, Alabama in 1925 and has played with the blues bands of Roy Brown and Ivory Joe Hunter. He was also in a Navy band before replacing trombonist Curtis Fuller in the Lateef group in the spring of 1957. His favorites on trumpet are Miles Davis, Fats Navarro, Dizzy Gillespie, Thad Jones and Clifford Brown. Miles, Brownie and Kenny Dorham are most evident in his fat-toned, legato style. Harden has an ease of delivery that is equally easy to listen to. On Love And Humor he contributes some unusual notes and melodies by expertly letting air escape from a balloon. Playful Flute is his composition.

Hugh Lawson was born in 1935 and attended Cass Tech High and Wayne State U. where he studied tenor sax as well as piano. He has been with Lateef’s group at Klein’s in Detroit since March 1956. Hugh lists Bud Powell, Thelonious Monk and Erroll Garner as his preferred pianists. Besides presenting a melodic, single-line piano here, Hugh plays the Turkish finger cymbals on Playful Flute, blows into a Seven Up bottle and rubs the surface of an inflated balloon in Love And Humor.

Ernie Farrow, the bassist, went to high school at Northeastern in Detroit. His professional credits include stints with Terry Gibbs and Stan Getz. Ernie’s original inspiration was Jimmy Blanton; he also likes Oscar Pettiford and Ray Brown. In the Lateef group he is not restricted to the conventional bass but also implements his work with the Rabat, a one-stringed affair that is evident on Playful Flute.

Oliver Jackson, nicknamed “Bops Junior” by his fellow Detroit musicians, was born in 1934. He studied drums at Miller High and with Merle Auley. He had appeared professionally with Wardell Gray and also the piano trios of Alex Kallao, Dorothy Donegan and Teddy Wilson before joining Yusef in September 1957. “Bops” is a very effective drummer in ensemble underlining, solo and just plain swinging. He is also heard on the Earth-board, a three-wire, wooden board, on Love And Humor.

Billy Strayhorn’s Take The A Train finds Lateef on flute and the group in a very American jazz groove. Yusef states the melody and, after short bits by Harden, Lawson and Farrow, returns for a solo wherein he employs his technique of singing wordless syllables as he simultaneously plays the flute. Lawson and Harden solo and there are exchanges between Farrow and Jackson. Then Oliver and the ensemble swap phrases before the theme is taken out.

Playful Flute is prefaced by the singular sound of coin on Scraper. Lateef states Harden’s Eastern melody and his solo against an exotic rhythmic background of Rabat and finger cymbals. Lateef’s singing and playing method is in evidence again.

Side B, featuring Yusef’s compositions, opens on Love And Humor with Chinese gong and Lawson piano. Immediately thereafter Hugh shifts to the Seven Up bottle and the rhythm section commences. Lateef enters on flute and exposes the Eastern theme. Lawson and Harden man the balloons and Yusef solos in his singing-playing manner.

Buckingham is a medium-up, minor-keyed theme which has Lateef switching to tenor. As prefaces to each of their solos, Harden and Lawson engage in exchanges with Jackson. Yusef has two choruses; Farrow and Jackson divide one unevenly with Ernie getting the lion’s share.

The moody Meditation is introduced by Chinese gong and Indian reed flute. Lateef, sounding extremely plaintive, Harden and Lawson are the soloists.