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Future Blues!
Tuesday, January 06, 2009
Legendary guitarist James 'Blood' Ulmer is appearing at the All Tomorrow's Parties Festival. By Brian Wise
You might not have heard much about 66-year-old James ‘Blood’ Ulmer but he is one of the most exciting and adventurous guitarists of the past four decades and an influence and inspiration to a host of musicians. His jagged and funky style is immediately recognisable and he is one of those are guitarists who has found his own unique voice.
Ulmer began his career playing jazz with groups such as Art Blakey's Jazz Messengers or with Joe Henderson, Paul Bley, Rashied Ali and Larry Young. In the early ‘70s he joined Ornette Coleman and is credited as the first electric guitarist to record and tour extensively with the avant-garde jazz legend. (To this day, Coleman remains an inspiration to him).
Ulmer went on to form the Music Revelation Ensemble with David Murray of the World Saxophone Quartet and drummer Ronald Shannon Jackson. The group also featured Julius Hemphill, Arthur Blythe, Sam Rivers, and Hamiet Bluiett on saxophones and flutes. He recorded extensively with Blythe and you can hear him all over the classic Lennox Avenue Breakdown.
Albums such as Tales Of Captain Black, Are You Glad To Be In America?, Freelancing and Black Rock featured Ulmer’s increasingly awesome and funky playing. Odyssey (released in 1983 and recorded with drummer Warren Benbow and violinist Charles Burnham) was described as ‘avant-gutbucket’ and helped cement Ulmer’s reputation amongst a new wave of rock musicians in New York who were open to the free jazz movements with bands like James Chance & The Contortions leading the No Wave scene. Ironically, Ulmer found a more receptive audience amongst rock musicians and listeners than the jazz fraternity that had nurtured his earlier career.
Over the past decade Ulmer has moved increasingly towards the blues. In 1994 he release Blues Is The Preacher and he has recorded his last three albums with the help of Vernon Reid from Living Color. Ulmer’s latest album, Bad Blood In The City: The Piety Street Sessions, is an ode to the victims of Hurricane Katrina and contains a mix of powerful original compositions and covers of songs such as Willie Dixon’s ‘Dead Presidents,’ Junior Kimbrough’s ‘sad Days, Lonely Nights,’ John Lee Hooker’s ‘This Land Is Nobody’s Land’ and Howlin’ Wolf’s ‘Commit A Crime.’
As a mark of his eclecticism you can see Ulmer each year in New Orleans at The Ponderosa Stomp, the quirky celebration of veteran musicians that has gained an increasing profile.
“I’m on a campaign of keeping the blues alive,” says Ulmer when I mention that I have seen him at The Stomp. “I learned a lot down there about the blues.”
“Right now, I am a blues preacher,” responds Ulmer when I mention the title of his 1994 album. “When I made that album I was thinking about the blues but now since 2000 I have made some blues records with the help of Vernon Reid. I always thought blues was the free-est form of music that we had and it comes in two forms: blues with words and blues without words. It became an obsession with me to work on blues with words because I already had worked on blues without words. So there’s no other way for me to go than to be a blues preacher because it’s more exciting. I get a chance to work with music and words.”
When I ask how the blues music he is playing compares with the jazz he started off playing early in his career he immediately refers to Ornette Coleman saying, “The music I was playing with him, that harmolodic music, I think that’s the blues without words. That’s what drew me to it in the first place. I was playing guitar and I never did have a chance to express myself verbally. I said, ‘Oh man, I want to do more. I want somebody to really know what I am trying to say. So when I got vocal blues it seemed like it just made my day.”
“Even then, even then, even then,” emphasises Ulmer when talking about his very early solo albums, “even then it was based on blues. I didn’t know that at first but I got in touch with my feelings as I went along.”
The latest album, Bad Blood In The City: The Piety Street Sessions, was supposed to be recorded in London but the record company decided that there was not enough money to fund it so Veron Reid suggested they go to New Orleans instead.
“Remember,” continues Ulmer, “Vernon Reid has produced all my blues records. He was the Chairman of the Board from 2001. Before we went to New Orleans I was writing these songs about the storm down there not thinking that they would get on a record because most of the blues I did was all cover songs. Then I was writing these songs and I had about twelve of them and when I found out we were going to New Orleans I said, ‘Oh man, maybe you listen to some of my songs and maybe we could use those. So he chose about four or five of them.”
“It was devastating,” says Ulmer of the hurricane, “I never seen anything like that before.” Two of the songs on his latest album are ‘Survivors Of The Hurricane’ and ‘Katrina.’ “To me, New Orleans was an example of what was happening everywhere, especially in the South. We were being taken over by something much stronger and the people were being eaten up by the neglect of the situation. By neglecting New Orleans it made it so obvious that there were other places being neglected. It’s deep, it’s real deep.”
Ulmer has included Willie Dixon’s song ‘Dead Presidents’ which is really a humorous comment on the US bank notes on which some of the presidents feature.
‘That’s the kind I like,” laughs Ulmer when I mention the song title and he chuckles loudly when I say that it would have been good to have George W Bush on that list.
“Yes, he missed it,” he laughs, “but he’ll be there one day for sure.”
James ‘Blood’ Ulmer will be here for sure in January playing All Tomorrow’s Parties and some side shows.
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