MON., AUGUST 01, 2005
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Blue Blood
by John Morthland
James "Blood" Ulmer is best known as a free-jazz guitarist. He probably attracted the most attention in the mid '70s, when he recorded for a major label and was a follower of Ornette Coleman's harmolodic philosophy — a system of composition and playing best understood when heard in action rather than explained in print — but he's recorded and played live steadily since then. In 2001, former Living Color guitarist Vernon Reid convinced him to cut a blues album — surprisingly enough, given Ulmer's guitar-god stature, because Reid loved Blood's blues singing, which indeed turns out to be straight from the heart, with uncontrived rawness and vibrato. Though Ulmer's work (like much of Ornette's) had always been partially rooted in blues both technically and emotionally, he'd never before done anything as explicit as the Reid-produced Memphis Blood: The Sun Sessions. But on CD, anyhow, he's been a bluesman ever since.
Whatever it started as, blues today is rarely grounded in rural ways (even a generation or two removed) or the hardships of poverty, racism and daily exploitation. Blues today is a music of choice, not an imposed lifestyle, and Ulmer treats it accordingly, which is part of the reason he can make the transition from free jazz so effortlessly. At the same time, Ulmer has led more of blues life than most who call themselves bluesmen, and that never hurts. Born in South Carolina in 1942, he sang gospel in the church and then in the Southern Sons. He spent the early '60s playing funk guitar in Pittsburgh and Columbus, Ohio, before hitting the Detroit jazz scene in '67, during which time he played in the delightfully down-home Hammond B-3 combos of Big John Patton and Hank Marr. Moving to New York in '71, he played at Minton's in Harlem, where bebop had been born several generations earlier, and in the bands of mainstreamers like Art Blakey and avant-gardists like Paul Bley. Then he hooked up with Ornette.
In simplest terms, harmolodics eliminates distinctions between lead and rhythm players, between melody and rhythm, so that all musicians express themselves equally with each other in terms of harmony. Using this notion, Ulmer developed an earthy style of modally based improvisation that alluded to blues, funk and jazz without being pigeonholed into any of the three; it was full of astringent tunings, dissonance, drone and pitch-bending, and remained rhythmic and visceral even at its most erratic.
If the blues form theoretically lends this music more structure — or, more accurately, more conventional, easily-processed structure — it has certainly not cramped his style in the process. The droning, one-chord vamps of harmolodic guitar aren't all that different from what, say, John Lee Hooker or the North Mississippi hill country guitarists often play; they just sound that way, given the context. The overtones and undertones he develops feel similar to those of Son House and his slide guitar. Through three albums now, Ulmer has explored blues from three different angles, sticking close to the form while simultaneously taking liberties with it.
Memphis Blood, recorded at the original Sun Records studios (hence its full title), finds him with his usual rhythm section of Aubrey Dayle on drums and Mark Peterson on bass, augmented most notably by keyboards man Rick Steff and the ever-inventive violinist Charles Burnham. There's also David Barnes on harmonica and Reid on second guitar. With a few exceptions, the album takes on the Delta-based, amplified Chicago blues of Muddy Waters and Howlin' Wolf, with a couple Hookers and a House (a foreboding, nine-minute skewed-shuffle arrangement of "Death Letter Blues") thrown in for good measure. It's full of spooky and spiky guitar work and seemingly haphazard arrangements that owe equally to harmolodic and blues musics. But the crushing, eight-minute roller coaster ride on Wolf's "I Asked for Water (She Gave Me Gasoline)" is arguably the highlight; it's one of the rare occasions where Reid's own guitar pushes Ulmer rather than getting in his way.
(Ulmer recorded 2003's No Escape from the Blues: The Electric Lady Sessions with essentially the same band, yet it deals with blues as a pop music form: the jug-band style revival of Jimmy Reed's "Goin' to New York," Johnny Copeland's touching "Ghetto Child," the churchy and eminently simple update of "Trouble in Mind." As an album, it's only slightly less successful than Memphis Blood.)
This year's Birthright is a solo departure, with Ulmer on guitar, vocals and a little flute, and Reid still around only as producer. The opening "Take Me Back to the Church" states his intent here: "I'm gonna take my music/ Back to the church/ Where the blues was misunderstood/ Some people think that it's the song of the devil/ But it's the soul of the man for sure." He spends most of the album seeking to reconcile the religious/secular and spiritual/carnal issues that have historically split black American music right up to the present day, albeit in a milder form. And if he does it most often with a contemporary spin on Son House's slide guitar style that he pulls off without actually using a slide, Ulmer's bop-like lines on "High Yellow" show he's not yet finished probing and opening up the blues even further.
Whatever it started as, blues today is rarely grounded in rural ways (even a generation or two removed) or the hardships of poverty, racism and daily exploitation. Blues today is a music of choice, not an imposed lifestyle, and Ulmer treats it accordingly, which is part of the reason he can make the transition from free jazz so effortlessly. At the same time, Ulmer has led more of blues life than most who call themselves bluesmen, and that never hurts. Born in South Carolina in 1942, he sang gospel in the church and then in the Southern Sons. He spent the early '60s playing funk guitar in Pittsburgh and Columbus, Ohio, before hitting the Detroit jazz scene in '67, during which time he played in the delightfully down-home Hammond B-3 combos of Big John Patton and Hank Marr. Moving to New York in '71, he played at Minton's in Harlem, where bebop had been born several generations earlier, and in the bands of mainstreamers like Art Blakey and avant-gardists like Paul Bley. Then he hooked up with Ornette.
In simplest terms, harmolodics eliminates distinctions between lead and rhythm players, between melody and rhythm, so that all musicians express themselves equally with each other in terms of harmony. Using this notion, Ulmer developed an earthy style of modally based improvisation that alluded to blues, funk and jazz without being pigeonholed into any of the three; it was full of astringent tunings, dissonance, drone and pitch-bending, and remained rhythmic and visceral even at its most erratic.
If the blues form theoretically lends this music more structure — or, more accurately, more conventional, easily-processed structure — it has certainly not cramped his style in the process. The droning, one-chord vamps of harmolodic guitar aren't all that different from what, say, John Lee Hooker or the North Mississippi hill country guitarists often play; they just sound that way, given the context. The overtones and undertones he develops feel similar to those of Son House and his slide guitar. Through three albums now, Ulmer has explored blues from three different angles, sticking close to the form while simultaneously taking liberties with it.
Memphis Blood, recorded at the original Sun Records studios (hence its full title), finds him with his usual rhythm section of Aubrey Dayle on drums and Mark Peterson on bass, augmented most notably by keyboards man Rick Steff and the ever-inventive violinist Charles Burnham. There's also David Barnes on harmonica and Reid on second guitar. With a few exceptions, the album takes on the Delta-based, amplified Chicago blues of Muddy Waters and Howlin' Wolf, with a couple Hookers and a House (a foreboding, nine-minute skewed-shuffle arrangement of "Death Letter Blues") thrown in for good measure. It's full of spooky and spiky guitar work and seemingly haphazard arrangements that owe equally to harmolodic and blues musics. But the crushing, eight-minute roller coaster ride on Wolf's "I Asked for Water (She Gave Me Gasoline)" is arguably the highlight; it's one of the rare occasions where Reid's own guitar pushes Ulmer rather than getting in his way.
(Ulmer recorded 2003's No Escape from the Blues: The Electric Lady Sessions with essentially the same band, yet it deals with blues as a pop music form: the jug-band style revival of Jimmy Reed's "Goin' to New York," Johnny Copeland's touching "Ghetto Child," the churchy and eminently simple update of "Trouble in Mind." As an album, it's only slightly less successful than Memphis Blood.)
This year's Birthright is a solo departure, with Ulmer on guitar, vocals and a little flute, and Reid still around only as producer. The opening "Take Me Back to the Church" states his intent here: "I'm gonna take my music/ Back to the church/ Where the blues was misunderstood/ Some people think that it's the song of the devil/ But it's the soul of the man for sure." He spends most of the album seeking to reconcile the religious/secular and spiritual/carnal issues that have historically split black American music right up to the present day, albeit in a milder form. And if he does it most often with a contemporary spin on Son House's slide guitar style that he pulls off without actually using a slide, Ulmer's bop-like lines on "High Yellow" show he's not yet finished probing and opening up the blues even further.
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