Listening to Music Together

A funny thing happened after I requested a review copy of Craft Recording’s new one-step vinyl edition of Yusef Lateef’s Eastern Sounds, a long-player that was originally released in 1961 on Moodsville, a subsidiary of Prestige. Eastern Sounds is Craft’s second one-step platter, the first being John Coltrane’s Lush Life. I emailed the Eastern Sounds request late one morning, and an hour later I discovered, on one of the record-collecting sites I follow on Facebook, that the reissue had sold out before I’d even made the request.

The music section will, on a rare occasion, discuss a release that’s already out of print. For example, Wayne Garcia’s review of Craft Recording’s first one-step (John Coltrane’s Lush Life) for Issue 314. Even though that LP sold out before it was even released, we assumed a discussion of the album was still in order, partially to make more readers aware that the new series existed, but also to say something about the quality of the product. That review was arranged well before Coltrane went on sale, however, and because I waited so long to request a copy of Eastern Sounds, and never heard back from Craft, I assumed I wouldn’t hear that limited edition of an early Yusef Lateef record.

Much to my surprise, the one-step showed up on my doorstep a week or so after I asked for it, and I have been listening to Eastern Sounds in various formats and on different stereos ever since. I can think of worse ways to spend one’s time. The music is riveting—but it’s riveting in a silent way, the intensity beneath the surface becoming more apparent with each audition. There are those musicians—Miles Davis, Chet Baker, and Bill Evans, to name a few—who, while working in the sparest and quietest settings, can level you with a few well-chosen notes. Acquaint yourself with Eastern Sounds, and you’ll know the same is true for Yusef Lateef, whether he’s playing tenor saxophone, flute, oboe, or yun (which is described as a “Chinese globular flute” in the liner notes). His oboe sends a chill up my spine on “Love Theme from Spartacus,” and his flute is equally absorbing on “Love Theme from The Robe.” For tenor saxophone ballads, you can’t beat “Don’t Blame Me” and “Purple Flower.” And I can’t imagine a more sensitive pianist on this quartet date than Barry Harris, who mind-melds with Lateef while comping and dishes up some exquisitely crafted and highly melodic solos of his own. Bassist Ernie Farrow and drummer Lex Humphries also receive high marks for their sensitivity—and for offering a bulwark of support when the occasion calls for a more muscular approach, as on “Ching Miau.”

While listening to Eastern Sounds, I thought about the liner notes of Kind of Blue, where Bill Evans compares the aesthetic on that iconic LP to Japanese visual artists who “must paint on a thin stretched parchment with a special brush and black water paint in such a way that an unnatural or interrupted stroke will destroy the line or break through the parchment.” A similar aesthetic is at work on Eastern Sounds, where the members of the quartet use light brushstrokes, instead of smearing paint all over the canvas. Even on the most extroverted performance, “Chiang Miau,” on which Lateef plays some fiery tenor sax, the note count remains modest (and Harris lays out completely).

Because of its inner focus, Eastern Sounds would have made excellent quarantine fare, as the pandemic seemed to call for highly introspective music, but I now associate the record with the current and very nebulous in-between period, when, on a limited basis, people started leaving their domiciles and interacting with fellow humans in non-Zoom, real-life settings. Standing face to face, in other words—even if, at times, both faces are wearing masks. 

Recently the Executive Editor of TAS, Jonathan Valin, called to tell me that Greg Beron from United Home Audio would be visiting from out of town and playing some of Greg’s amazing R2R tapes dubbed from the original masters. They were going to listen to the tapes on Jonathan’s stereo, which includes the UHA SuperDeck, which JV reviews in this issue. Jonathan asked if I’d like to join them. I’m no fool—I happily accepted the invitation.

Jonathan and I have spent many hours listening to music, but we hadn’t even seen each other since COVID threw a curveball into everything. We quickly made up for lost time. For two nights Jonathan, Greg, and I hung out together and listened to tapes that Greg had somehow managed to acquire over the years. In a way that listening experience wasn’t all that different from those evenings in high school when my friends and I would spend the whole evening playing records, although I have to say the gear’s a lot better now. A week later I was over at Jonathan’s again, but this time we listened to vinyl on what I’ll call “Stereo #2,” his downstairs system. (That system, by the way, was no slouch, either.)

Those listening sessions are linked in my mind even though I heard two very different stereos, and I’ll try to explain why. If, as Wayne Garcia stated in his review of the remastered Lush Life, the “one-step lacquer process eliminates two processing steps to create an LP as close to the lacquer, and hence the mastertape, as possible [on vinyl],” the weekend we listened to the UHA SuperDeck I got as close to hearing mastertapes by major artists as I’m ever going to get. That experience was still fresh in my mind when Jonathan and I listened to Craft Recording’s Eastern Sounds on Stereo #2 a week later, and even though we switched over to vinyl, we were listening to a cartridge which, coincidentally enough, Jonathan believes sounds as close to a reel-to-reel tape player as any cartridge he has heard. In Issue 317, Jonathan wrote, “When used with DS Audio’s ION-001 ionizer and Stein Music’s Pi Carbon Signature record mat on the platter the Grand Master achieves a tape-like smoothness and organicism that are kind of astonishing in a phono cartridge. Indeed, its level of neutrality and ‘completeness’ is unexceeded by that of any other cartridge or phonostage of my experience, and its consequent level of realism (on the best sources) is very nearly nonpareil.”

If that level of realism appeals to you, I can think of worse albums to play than Eastern Sounds, in whatever format you can find it. (I also happen to have an original mono recording of the record, and I’m fond of that, as well.) The fact that Craft Recordings gave it the white glove treatment seems fitting, as the engineer was Rudy Van Gelder, who literally wore white gloves during the sessions that took place in his own Van Gelder Studios in Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey. Some of Van Gelder’s small-group recordings have such an intimate sound that they begin to have the aura of chamber music, and if you’re searching for evidence of that, Eastern Sounds would be Exhibit A. When you combine musicians who use notes as sparingly as these musicians do, leaving so much space that sound and silence seem intertwined, it helps to have a recording and a system that has virtually no noise and articulates each sound as cleanly as possible. Combine those qualities with a recording that’s strikingly immediate, intimate, and realistic, with so much up-close presence that the instruments seem etched into space, and all you need is some beautiful music to send a chill up your spine. Eastern Sounds had that effect on me.

While listening to the LP, and this was especially true while hearing it on the Grand Master, I found myself picturing the vibe in the studio on September 5, 1961, when the quartet recorded the album. I imagined a hush over the proceedings, the four musicians almost in a trance as they conveyed a sense of beauty that was fragile and delicate. Shortly after that listening session, I read what Jonathan had to say about the Grand Master: “Allowing you to ‘see’ how the performer is playing—and, just as importantly, allowing you to hear the thought and feeling he or she is playing with—requires supreme resolution, flawlessly neutral and natural tonal balance, unfettered dynamic range, and a complete absence of self-noise.”

What can I say? I get that.

That’s what I have to say about Eastern Sounds. But before I wrap things up, I should mention Jonathan’s reaction to the one-step. After hearing it, he went online to buy a copy. Upon learning that it was out of print and that second-hand copies were selling for hundreds of dollars, he chastised me, asking, “How come you didn’t order me one?” I look forward to hearing the new one-step titles from Craft Recordings, but in the back of my head I’m hoping they’ll ever get around to doing a second one-step of Eastern Sounds. If so, and if Jonathan ends up with a copy, that’ll make my life a little easier. After all, you gotta keep the boss happy.