Recording a huge amount of albums during the last few years of the fifties and the entirety of the sixties didn’t result in Yusef Lateef having a whole bunch of records that are satisfying from beginning to end. That doesn’t mean that his adventurous streak was all but disregarded. Nor does it mean that his odd ability to wrangle good performances from players that haven’t endured through the decades should be dismissed. But Lateef’s ability to perform in any mode at any given time seems to have been a blessing and a curse, making any guess at what an album sounds like most likely incorrect.

The shift between this 1961 date, entitled Eastern Sounds and his 1969 album Detroit is too broad to make any proper comparisons between the two. Everything from the tone of his playing the manner in which Lateef’s composed songs is different with this earlier disc coming off as a laid back and conceptually dense jazz effort.

The Eastern world and its tenets hadn’t as of yet infiltrated jazz on a large scale – that would come a few years later with Coltrane’s guttural skronking. But here, Lateef utilizes any number of Eastern scales, while still rendering the entire album as listenable for a mainstream audience. Including two numbers from soundtracks, both  the love theme from The Robe as well as that of Spartacus, the multi-instrumentalist issued sounds no one from passing appreciator of the genre to vilified critic could comment negatively.

Even in Eastern Sounds’ most exploratory passages, there’s nothing that might offend the uninitiated, although, Lateef was working with unexplored territory. “Chinq Miau,” the album’s third track, is all modal with a swift drum backing. It’s all focused on Lateef’s winding improvisations through chords. What’s interesting, though, is that “Don't Blame Me” directly follows the track. And this next number, for the most part, has nothing to do with those explorations of other continents, instead concerning itself with mastery of the ballad and almost quotes “God Bless the Child”.

It should occur to listeners familiar with Lateef’s work and new comers alike, that what makes this as well as Detroit high water marks in a shaky recorded career, is adherence to a single vibe. While all the Eastern modes and scales distance this disc from mainstream efforts of the time, adhering to a balladesque pacing throughout results in a coherence Lateef landed upon only a few times in his expansive career.