Originally on the scene as a tenor saxophonist with the bands of Lucky Millinder, Hot Lips Page, Dizzy Gillespie and others in the late 1940s, Yusef Lateef spent most of the 1950s leading his own combo, studying at Wayne University, and taking up flute and oboe. I started using them in Detroit, to get rid of the monotony, said Lateef, this was one of the initial thoughts. After all, basically, music is just sound, in my opinion, any sounds of definite pitch.