Artist: James Blood Ulmer Trio
Genre(s):
Jazz
Discography:
Live Zurich
Year: 1988
Tracks: 5
Free jazz has not produced many noteworthy guitarists. Experimental musicians careworn to the guitar have had few nothingness role models; consequently, they've typically looked to rock-based players for brainchild. James "Blood" Ulmer is one of the few exceptions -- an outside guitarist world Health Organization has forged a trend based largely on the traditions of African-American lingo music. Ulmer is an adherent of saxophonist/composer Ornette Coleman's vaguely defined Harmolodic theory, which fundamentally subverts jazz's harmonic element in favor of freely jury-rigged, non-tonal, or quasi-modal counterpoint. Ulmer plays with a stuttering, vocalic attack; his lines are often texturally and chordally based, inflected with the emphasis of a soul-jazz tenor saxist. That's not to enjoin his sound is untouched by the rock tradition -- the influence of Jimi Hendrix on Ulmer is strong -- merely it's sundry with blues, funk, and button jazz elements. The vector sum music is an expressive, hard-edged, forte amplified hybrid that is, at its charles VII Herbert Best, on a level with the finest of the Harmolodic school.
Ulmer began his vocation playacting in funk bands, first in Pittsburgh (1959-1964) and later around Columbus, OH (1964-1967). Ulmer exhausted iV days in Detroit earlier moving to New York in 1971. He landed a nine-month gig at the noted birthplace of federal Bureau of Prisons, 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 hooklike up with Ornette Coleman, whose conception affected Ulmer's music thereafter. The guitarist's recordings from the late '70s and early '80s exhibit a singular read on his mentor's artistic. His blues and rock-tinged prowess was, if anything, more raw and aggressive than Coleman's free malarky and funk-derived music (a observation, no incertitude, of Ulmer's chosen instrument), but no less compelling from either an rational or an emotional standpoint. In 1981, Ulmer light-emitting diode the first of triad record dates for Columbia, which helped to queer his music to a wider world. Around this time Ulmer began an connection with tenor saxist David Murray, Bassist Amin Ali, and drummer Ronald Shannon Jackson. As the Music Revelation Ensemble, this intermittent aggregation (with various other members added and subtracted) would bring forth a issue of intense, free-blowing albums over a span of well-nigh deuce decades.
Ulmer's work has varied in quality over the eld. In 1987, with the concerted mathematical group Phalanx (George Adams, tenor saxophone; Sirone, sea bass; and Rashied Ali, drums), Ulmer drew successfully on the unloose jazz expressionism that made his diagnose. Generally, however, Ulmer's sake in out idle words waned in the '80s and '90s, to the extent that his music became progressively more structured, rhythmically regular, and (arguably) less imaginative. Much of his after exercise bears scant resemblance to the jittery free jazz he played earlier. Nevertheless, '90s recordings with the Music Revelation Ensemble showed him still capable of playing convincingly in that nervure.
Blood dug deep into an probe of the blues as the century off. First he recorded Memphis Blood: The Sun Sessions with guitarist Veron Reid both playing and producing. The album too starred veteran Ulmer sideman Charles Burnham on violin. In 2003 he issued No Escape From the Blues, recorded at Electric Lady studio. A thorouhgly psychedlic funky read on the musical style, Reidand Burnham were portray in the same roles once more, and old acquaintance Olu Dara stopped-up into to contribute as well. In 2005 Blood released Birthright, on Joel DOrn's Hyena label. It is easily his almost intimatre recording. Completely solo in the studio (Thomas Reid erst over again produced) it contains 10 orignals and two covers of classical reportoire and takes Blood's megrims jounrey to an exclusively new stratum.
