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Born William Emmanuel Huddleston in Chattanooga, Tennessee on the 9th October 1920, Lateef was a proficient saxophonist by the time of his graduation from high school at 18, the age at which he launched his professional career and began touring with a number of swing bands. The first instrument he bought was an alto saxophone but after a year he switched to tenor, influenced as he was by the playing of Lester Young. Lateef was invited to join Dizzy Gillespie's orchestra in 1949, before returning to Detroit the following year to study composition and flute at Wayne State University. It was around this time that Lateef converted to Islam and becoming part of the Ahmadiyya Muslim Community. Whilst primarily a master of both tenor saxophone and flute, Lateef was famed too for his heavy use of Eastern instrumentation. Peter Keepnews, in his New York Times obituary of Lateef, wrote that the musician "played world music before world music had a name." Lateef began recording in 1957 for both Savoy Records and for New Jazz (a subsidiary of Prestige). Lateef's grasp and implementation of Eastern influences was a central theme within his music, this is clear from the very first composition on his debut album Jazz For The Thinker (Savoy, 1957), where the use of North African instruments and unique vocal phrasing alongside more traditional arrangements were quite unlike anything else then available. Throughout this period, Yusef recorded and performed with a quartet, featuring Wilbur Harden (trumpet, flugelhorn), bassist Herman Wright, drummer Frank Gant, and pianist Hugh Lawson. Lateef was then among the hardest-working jazz musicians on the circuit, producing no fewer than eight albums during this period and even finding the time to study oboe under Ronald Odemark of the Detroit Symphony Orchestra.

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