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This rerelease has special significance for your scribe. In 1969 when I bought this Atlantic original LP as an import I was simply keen on the music I had heard from the Detroit area eg MC5, The Frost, The Stooges and was taken with the map of the area on the cover of this one. I knew nothing about Mr Lateef or his musicians but I had already learned the value of taking the odd risk on records, live shows and plays. Little did I know that I was buying a jazz album….

I now know that Yusef Lateef was already a skilled sax and flute player and was essaying a sound picture of the Michigan City. The project is pretty much a total success. Because although the closer ‘Lucky Old Sun’ was already a chestnut ballad, the rest of the album does conjure up a set of pictures for the ears – ‘Eastern Market’ has a real electric bustle, ‘Bishop School’ a stately opener with a rush of sound, driven  by one Bernard Purdie, drummer of renown and individual style. The other players I now know to be stellar personalities – acoustic bassist Cecil McBee, electric bassist Chuck Rainey, percussionist Tootie Heath, Hugh Lawson on colourful piano, Ray Baretto on conga !

The way these players listen to each other – bearing in mind they were crammed into a studio more fit for a quartet rather than an electric jazz ensemble with horns and a string quartet! – is a revelation and for me an education. I still see rock bands where the players know their parts, stand there and play them. But this kind of musical weaving is something else – the players have nothing to prove so they serve the tunes, let the leader direct them and play out when appropriate. For me, the electric guitar playing of Eric Gale was stunning and not because he was showing off or trying to play superfast. On the best cut ‘Russell & Eliot’ – about two statues I think – Lateef plays a wild sax lead against a ten-note bass riff split into fives and moving on a swooping lope. Gale stalks him, riffing assuredly as the sax solos. Then, he takes a snappy, sardonic guitar break, bitching like a crone over a garden fence and pinching out edge-of-harmonic notes. When the sax returns, instead of scrubbing chords, Gale plays damped-note figures that sound sinister and conspiratorial and the drums rattle away as Lateef lifts off and barks. Barely five minutes long, I swear this piece of music taught me more about dynamics and accompanying others than any blues or rock cut I ever heard.

This album shows a juiced-up jazz ensemble creating, interplaying and rocking and you may well love it as much as I do

Pete Sargeant     www.fairhearing.co.uk