Yusef Lateef’s Seminal ‘Eastern Sounds’ Album Reissued On Vinyl
Fusing hard bop with influences of Middle Eastern and Asian music, Eastern Sounds was exploratory yet highly accessible to mainstream jazz audiences.
Craft Recordings has revealed the second title in its one-step series Small Batch is Yusef Lateef’s 1961 classic, Eastern Sounds.
Originally released on Moodsville (an imprint of the legendary jazz label, Prestige Records), the upcoming Small Batch pressing of this groundbreaking album will be limited to 1,000 copies and released exclusively through CraftRecordings.com on April 23rd. The public pre-sale launches this Friday (March 26th) at 2:00 pm PST.
The all-analog, one-step lacquer process series Small Batch, launched in February with a reissue of John Coltrane’s 1961 album, Lush Life – hailed by Analog Planet as “…flawless and…as close to the original tape as you’re likely to hear.”
This reissue of Eastern Sounds was mastered from the original stereo tapes by Grammy Award-winning mastering engineer Bernie Grundman and pressed utilizing Neotech’s VR9000 compound on 180-gram vinyl at RTI in a one-step lacquer process– as opposed to the standard three-step process – allowing for the utmost level of musical detail, clarity, and dynamics while reducing the amount of surface noise on the record.
The limited nature of the pressing guarantees that each record is a true representation of the original lacquer and is as close as the listener can get to the original recording. New liner notes from the Grammy Award-winning music historian, journalist, and producer, Ashley Kahn complete the package.
The engaging, nine-track album primarily consists of Lateef’s original compositions, in addition to the Jimmy McHugh standard “Don’t Blame Me” and two soundtrack selections: “Love Theme from Spartacus” and “Love Theme from The Robe.” Spanning a variety of moods, Eastern Sounds “effectively balances the familiar with the foreign,” explains Kahn in his liner notes. “When the album truly looks east—in sound and title – magic happens.”
A lifelong student, Lateef (1920–2013) received his bachelor’s and master’s degrees at Manhattan School of Music, and later, earned a doctorate in education from the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. Lateef served as a professor at both of his alma maters, among other institutions.
In 2010, the Grammy-winning artist received the Jazz Master Fellowship Award from the National Endowment for the Arts—the highest US honor that can be bestowed upon a jazz musician.
Pre-order Eastern Sounds here (beginning this Friday at 2:00 pm PST)
Eastern Sounds Track List
Side A:
1. The Plum Blossom
2. Blues for the Orient
3. Chinq Miau
4. Don’t Blame Me
Side B:
1. Love Theme from Spartacus
2. Snafu
3. Purple Flower
4. Love Theme from The Robe
5. The Three Faces of Balal
