About

DJ and broadcaster Gilles Peterson’s exploration of the Warner Music archive has led him to a standout album from a true jazz innovator. For a special reissue on his Arc label, Peterson has personally selected Yusef Lateef's Detroit Latitude 42° 30' Longitude 83°, an album of raw, funky blues and soul jazz that captures the intense, urban density of the motor city itself, Detroit, the city Lateef grew up in.

By the time Lateef came to record Yusef Lateef's Detroit for Atlantic Records in February 1969, he was a well-established and highly-regarded multi-instrumentalist who had, since the mid-1950s, cut a highly individual furrow in jazz. Recording for numerous labels including Savoy, Argo, Prestige, Riverside and Impulse. He was a progenitor for what many now call ‘spiritual jazz’ and ‘world music’, mixing jazz, folk, blues, and gospel, with funk, free improvisation, classical, meditative and Eastern musical styles; he never felt constrained by any musical dimension or stylistic limitation.

On Yusef Lateef's Detroit, Lateef is joined by a band featuring some of the finest jazz and funk players of the era including Cecil McBee and Chuck Rainey on bass, Bernard Purdie and Roy Brooks on drums, Ray Barretto and Albert ‘Tootie’ Heath on percussion, and Jimmy Owens and Thad Jones on trumpet. The session was produced by Joel Dorn, noted for his landmark work with Roland Kirk, Eddie Harris, Roberta Flack and many others. - Arc Records