Yusef Lateef - Cry! - Tender -1991

The oboe, a double-reed creature that bites inattentive handlers, made its first appearance as a member of Yusef Lateef's performing instrument collection in 1959, on this album. Lateef, to the interest of many and no one's surprise, had become the maverick's master, as he already was the tenor saxophone and the flute. Another color had been added to the pallete of an artist whose life has been an expansion of possibilities in the art of wedding the exotic to the fundamental. A collection that brings moodiness, lyricism, down-home earnestness, and the whiff of sandalwood into fine balance, Cry!-Tender is one of jewels of the early discography of a musician of passion, integrity and scope.