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| A bespoke limited-edition of Yusef Lateef's Detroit Latitude 42° 30′ Longitude 83° from '69 is being released on April 22. |
Here's the scoop...
Jet-setting UK DJ and Brownswood Recordings head honcho Gilles Peterson has dug deep into the Warner Music archives to uncover Yusef Lateef's 1969 concept album about his hometown, Detroit Latitude 42° 30′ Longitude 83° despite the fact that you can still find copies of the Joel Dorn-produced spiritual jazz swinger in second-hand shops selling for under $20.
Of course, Arc Records' new bespoke version of Lateef's overlooked gem – remastered from the original analog tapes by audio engineer deluxe Bernie Grundman on 180 gram noir vinyl resplendently housed in a thick cardboard sleeve reproducing the original artwork with new liner notes by Dexter Gordon's widow Maxine Gordon – is clearly aimed at the deep-pocketed vinyl collector nouveau market who dare not frequent establishments that deal in previously owned recordings and typically restrict their purchases to Record Store Day events.
With that specific target audience in mind, it makes perfect sense then that this new limited edition of Yusef Lateef's Detroit album will be strictly limited to 2000 copies and on sale for UK Record Store Day which is coming up on Saturday, April 22. Some British mail order sites are already listing copies at anywhere from £36 to £60 (that's $60 to $100 Canadian!) so when shipping costs are added, you can expect to pay a hefty sum here in North America. And once the opportunistic speculators get involved, who knows to what heights the price may soar at resale sites online. Or you could just keep an eye out for a considerably less pricey red label Atlantic original Canuck copy and support your local vinyl shop in the process. Wasn't that the purported reason for creating a "record store day" in the first place? Maybe not.
Hopefully Peterson will turn up some harder-to-find artifacts for his Arc Records imprint in the future. Perhaps some previously unreleased material might be nice but even a lesser known private-press corker from the late 70s or early 80s – there's loads of great stuff waiting to be discovered – would be a more worthwhile pursuit for the entire vinyl eco-system than re-releasing an album that's already been reissued numerous times and is still widely available on vinyl and CD formats.
For those interested in what Yusef Lateef himself had to say about his Detroit project, check out the Wax Poetics feature interview right here. Listen to a few tracks off the Detroit album below.
