Artist: James Blood Ulmer
Genre(s):
Jazz
R&B: Soul
Avantgarde
Blues
Discography:
Live Willisau Jazz Festival
Year: 2006
Tracks: 9
Birthright
Year: 2005
Tracks: 12
Tales of Captain Black
Year: 1996
Tracks: 8
Odyssey
Year: 1996
Tracks: 8
Are You Glad to Be in America?
Year: 1995
Tracks: 10
Black and Blues
Year: 1994
Tracks: 9
Black Rock
Year: 1982
Tracks: 9
Free Lancing
Year: 1981
Tracks: 10
LIVE at the Bayrischer Hof
Year:
Tracks: 8
Free jazz has not produced many notable guitarists. Experimental musicians drawn to the guitar take had few jazz role models; accordingly, they've typically looked to rock-based players for stirring. James "Blood" Ulmer is one of the few exceptions -- an outside guitar player wHO has forged a style based mostly on the traditions of African-American vernacular music. Ulmer is an disciple of saxophonist/composer Ornette Coleman's vaguely defined Harmolodic theory, which fundamentally subverts jazz's harmonized element in favour of freely makeshift, non-tonal, or quasi-modal counterpoint. Ulmer plays with a stuttering, vocalic attack; his lines ar oftentimes texturally and chordally based, inflected with the accent of a soul-jazz tenor saxist. That's non to say his sound is untouched by the rock tradition -- the influence of Jimi Hendrix on Ulmer is strong -- merely it's assorted with blues, casimir Funk, and free jazz elements. The outcome euphony is an expressive, hard-edged, aloud amplified hybrid that is, at its best, on a level with the finest of the Harmolodic schooling.
Ulmer began his vocation performing in funk bands, first-class honours degree in Pittsburgh (1959-1964) and later around Columbus, OH (1964-1967). Ulmer spent little Joe years in Detroit before moving to New York in 1971. He landed a nine-month gig at the renowned 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 mark. That same yr, he hooked up with Ornette Coleman, whose construct touched Ulmer's euphony thenceforth. The guitarist's recordings from the recent '70s and other '80s show a unequalled assume on his mentor's esthetic. His blues and rock-tinged fine art was, if anything, more than raw and aggressive than Coleman's release jazz and funk-derived music (a reflexion, no dubiety, of Ulmer's chosen cat's-paw), merely no less compelling from either an intellectual or an emotional stand. In 1981, Ulmer lED the start of trine record dates for Columbia, which helped to expose his euphony to a wider populace. Around this time Ulmer began an association with tenor saxist 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 raise a act of intense, free-blowing albums over a straddle of virtually iI decades.
Ulmer's act has varied in quality over the days. In 1987, with the cooperative mathematical group Phalanx (George V Adams, tenor adolphe Sax; Sirone, bass; and Rashied Ali, drums), Ulmer john Drew successfully on the exempt malarky expressionism that made his identify. Generally, withal, Ulmer's interestingness in out jazz waned in the '80s and '90s, to the extent that his music became more and more more structured, rhythmically regular, and (arguably) less inventive. Much of his later work bears stint resemblance to the overstrung free jazz he played to begin with. Nevertheless, '90s recordings with the Music Revelation Ensemble showed him noneffervescent subject of performing convincingly in that mineral vein.
Roue dug deeply into an investigation of the blues as the century turned. First he recorded Memphis Blood: The Sun Sessions with guitar player Veron Reid both performing and producing. The record album besides starred veteran Ulmer sideman Charles Burnham on fiddle. In 2003 he issued No Escape From the Blues, recorded at Electric Lady studio. A thorouhgly psychedlic foul take on the musical style, Reidand Burnham were acquaint in the same roles once more, and old friend Olu Dara stopped up into to bring as well. In 2005 Blood released Birthright, on Joel DOrn's Hyena mark. It is easily his well-nigh intimatre recording. Completely solo in the studio (Thomas Reid in one case once again produced) it contains 10 orignals and two covers of classic reportoire and takes Blood's blues jounrey to an all unexampled level.
