A virtuoso of the tenor sax, flue and oboe, Lateef worked with Dizzy Gillespie, Charles Mingus, Cannonball Adderley, Miles Davis and Grant Green and is today best known for his innovative blending of eastern music with jazz, paving the way for the likes of Coltrane and Pharoah Sanders who would open up this musical territory in the sixties. These recordings from 1957/58 feature such exotic instrumentation, unusual timbres and colours of which would have come as a huge shock to the listener back in the Fifties.