There probably isn't a guitarist today who is at once rootsy, complex, and yet undernoticed as James "Blood" Ulmer. He stands at the juxtaposition of so many styles that he cannot be put neatly in a single one of those. His uniquely scrabbling guitar attack, as once described by Village Voice music critic Greg Tate, is "the missing link between Jimi Hendrix and Wes Montgomery on one hand, between P-Funk and Mississippi Fred McDowell on the other." He's got a gruff singing style to match his axe playing, weary but full of old-school attitude.
When you examine his long and extensive background, you begin to understand how he got to pull together so many disparate varieties of music together. In the sixties he played R&B and funk in juke joints across the Midwest. He played for organ man Big John Patton and legendary drummer Art Blakey. But then he also served under Rashied Ali and Ornette Coleman. He's also played with Ronald Sannon Jackson and David Murray.
His association with Coleman has a huge impact on his approach to music, and to this day you can still find traces of harmolodics in everything he plays. Tales Of Caption Black, Ulmer's first solo LP from 1978, is virtually a Prime Time date, and one of their better ones at that.
After all that, you'd think that this is a lead-up to yet another whack jazz record review. Nope, not this time. Instead, this is about the best blues release of 2007.
Bad Blood In The City is a record I've been admittedly a little late in picking up on. There's been a lot of Katrina-related albums out there in the last couple of years that we've been trumpeting over here. Heck, this space has even covered Katrina-themed blues records before, most recently a pretty nice one by Bryan Lee. I acquired Ulmer's latest not long after its May release, but somehow it slipped through the cracks of the Pico playlist until last month. Maybe subconsciously thought there all that was needed to be sung about Katrina has been done quite well by now.
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Article comments
1 - Mark Saleski
Ulmer is a wonder, eh? i mean, i bought Are You Glad To Be In America? all those years ago and would have never thought he would be playing music like this.
2 - Michael J. West
Mark's right - Ulmer is dizzyingly unique. I know a modern-classical guitarist who says Morton Feldman, Derek Bailey, and Ulmer are his major influences...wouldn't have dreamed he'd be doing a blues record.
3 - Pico
Ulmer has actually been making blues records on and off since around 1990. But it wasn't until Memphis Blood that he got a lot of recognition for his blues side, which is why I call that record a "watershed" for him. Since then, blues seems to be all he does lately. As long as he makes them this good, that's alright by me.
4 - Michael J. West
Guess that tells you I haven't paid the attention to Ulmer that I should have since the late '80s records. *blush*
5 - Pico
No need to blush, Michael.
Everytime I think I know a few things about jazz I read one of your columns and come back down to earth again. The education is always fun, though.
6 - Michael J. West
And since you've got me prowling Amazon for Ulmer records, Pico, I can safely say that the feeling is more than mutual!