James Blood Ulmer
Free jazz has not produced many notable guitarists. Experimental musicians drawn to the guitar have had few jazz role models; consequently, they've typically looked to rock-based players for inspiration. James Blood Ulmer is one of the few exceptionsan outside guitarist who has forged a style based largely on the traditions of African-American vernacular music. Ulmer is an adherent of saxophonist/composer Ornette Coleman's vaguely defined Harmolodic theory, which essentially subverts jazz's harmonic component in favor of freely improvised, non-tonal, or quasi-modal counterpoint. Ulmer plays with a stuttering, vocalic attack; his lines are frequently texturally and chordally based, inflected with the accent of a soul-jazz tenor saxophonist. That's not to say his sound is untouched by the rock traditionthe influence of Jimi Hendrix on Ulmer is strongbut it's mixed with blues, funk, and free jazz elements. The resultant music is an expressive, hard-edged, loudly amplified hybrid that is, at its best, on a level with the finest of the Harmolodic school.
Ulmer began his career playing in funk bands, first in Pittsburgh (1959-1964) and later around Columbus, OH (1964-1967). Ulmer spent four years in Detroit before moving to New York in 1971. He landed a nine-month gig at the famed birthplace of bop, Minton's Playhouse, and played very briefly with Art Blakey. In 1973, he recorded Rashied Ali Quintet with the ex-John Coltrane drummer on the Survival label. That same year, he hooked up with Ornette Coleman, whose concept affected Ulmer's music thereafter. The guitarist's recordings from the late '70s and early '80s exhibit a unique take on his mentor's aesthetic. His blues and rock-tinged art was, if anything, more raw and aggressive than Coleman's free jazz and funk-derived music (a reflection, no doubt, of Ulmer's chosen instrument), but no less compelling from either an intellectual or an emotional standpoint. In 1981, Ulmer led the first of three record dates for Columbia, which helped to expose his music to a wider public. Around this time Ulmer began an association with tenor saxophonist David Murray, Bassist Amin Ali, and drummer Ronald Shannon Jackson. As the Music Revelation Ensemble, this intermittent assemblage (with various other members added and subtracted) would produce a number of intense, free-blowing albums over a span of almost two decades.
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In Pictures
Live Review
Album Review
- Baby Talk by Mark Corroto
Live From New York
Album Review
- In And Out by Dan Bilawsky
- Bad Blood in the City: The Piety Street Sessions by Chris M. Slawecki
- Bad Blood in the City: The Piety Street Sessions by Troy Collins
- Bad Blood in the City: The Piety Street Sessions by Ian Patterson
Interview
Album Review
- Birthright by C. Michael Bailey
June 12, 2014
Vision Festival 19 Welcomes Whit Dickey And James Blood Ulmer
June 07, 2011
James "Blood" Ulmer - Live at the Bayerischer Hof (In+out 1994, 2011)
July 26, 2010
IN + OUT RECORDS Announces Exclusive U.S. National Distribution Through...
June 08, 2010
James Blood Ulmer - In and out (in and Out)
May 14, 2010
James Blood Ulmer - In and Out (2010)
February 14, 2007
James Blood Ulmer to Release "Bad Blood in the City" / to Appear @...
January 12, 2007
James Blood Ulmer Goes to New Orleans to Record New Album
November 16, 2005
James Blood Ulmer's Birthright Wins Blues Album of the Year in DownBeat...
September 06, 2005
James Blood Ulmer @ An die Musik Live, Baltimore this Saturday(10 Sept
March 02, 2005
James Blood Ulmer's "Birthright" Scheduled for May 24 Release on HYENA...