Jazz Articles about James Blood Ulmer

James Blood Ulmer: In and Out

by AAJ Italy Staff
January 12, 2010

Per questo ottimo album registrato in Germania nell'agosto del 2008 il chitarrista americano James Blood Ulmer sceglie la formula del power trio cara a Jimi Hendrix: chitarra, basso e batteria. Semplice, diretta, lineare. Difficile sbagliare, facile cadere nella routine. Ma questo pericolo viene scansato abilmente dalla vena creativa del sessantasettenne musicista che ha percorso un tracciato davvero originale che lo ha portato dal free jazz (al fianco di Ornette Coleman nella seconda metà degli anni settanta) alla riscoperta del blues ...

James Blood Ulmer: Bad Blood in the City: The Piety Street Sessions

by Chris M. Slawecki
February 19, 2008

"Blood wrote these songs that are the essence of the blues," suggests producer and guitarist Vernon Reid. “They're politically incorrect, they're sad and haunting, they're pissed off and on an existential level, they address the complicated concept that is America, which is something Blood's been dealing with since the beginning of his career."

You might forgive a certain about of hyperbole from the producer, but even one listen to Bad Blood in the City proves that what Reid ...

James Blood Ulmer: Bad Blood in the City: the Piety Street Sessions

by AAJ Italy Staff
July 2, 2007

Se qualcuno aveva ancora qualche dubbio sul fatto che James “Blood” Ulmer fosse innanzitutto e prima di ogni altra cosa un chitarrista blues, Bad Blood in The City dovrebbe contribuire a sgombrare definitivamente il campo da qualsiasi fraintendimento. Ulmer era già blues quando accompagnava Ornette Coleman e tutti lo definivano pomposamente “harmolodic guitarist”; era blues quando al fianco di Ronald Shannon Jackson e Rashied Ali metteva a soqquadro il mondo delle sei corde free; era blues quando licenziando Odyssey sanciva ...

James "Blood" Ulmer: Bad Blood in the City: The Piety Street Sessions

by Troy Collins
May 30, 2007

Almost two years after the devastation of Hurricane Katrina, Bad Blood In The City arrives. During its chaotic aftermath, Harmolodic guitarist and futuristic bluesman James “Blood" Ulmer penned a number of tunes inspired by the events surrounding the disaster. Bolstered by a half dozen classic blues tunes, this concept record serves as a harrowing reminder of the tragedy.

Recorded at Piety Street Studios in New Orleans, Ulmer leads his seven-piece Memphis Blood Blues Band in a rough and ...

James Blood Ulmer: Bad Blood in the City: The Piety Street Sessions

by Ian Patterson
May 10, 2007

The Piety recording studio, where James Blood Ulmer recorded Bad Blood in the City: The Piety Street Sessions, stands on the corner of Piety and Dauphine Streets, the original route of the famous Desire streetcar line in New Orleans' ninth ward. In an early scene from Tennessee Williams' play, A Streetcar Named Desire, Stanley enters the kitchen leaving the door open so that “the perpetual blue piano" can be heard from the neighborhood. “This blue piano," Williams explains, “expresses the ...

Odyssey the Band: Back in Time

by AAJ Italy Staff
September 27, 2006

Negli ultimi anni il chitarrista-cantante James Blood Ulmer si è spostato ad esplorare scenari singolari di blues post-rurale, ottenendo risultati di grande interesse. I suoi recenti lavori hanno il pregio di essere basati sulla rilettura di elementi tradizionali filtrati dalla sua peculiare visione mutuata da quella sensibilità di avanguardista ‘sui generis’ che tutti gli riconoscono. In questo caso però Ulmer richiama al suo fianco il violinista Charles Burnham e il batterista Warren Benbow e ricrea la magia del progetto Odissey ...

James Blood Ulmer: There is Another Place to Go

by Paul Olson
August 9, 2005

Guitarist James Blood Ulmer's played his way through a veritable history of American music. Beginning guitar as a four-year-old in 1946, Ulmer was singing professionally with the gospel group The Southern Sons while still in grade school. Ulmer went on to play guitar on the national R&B/doo-wop chitlin' circuit until he devoted himself to jazz, becoming something of a Wes Montgomery imitator until he reinvented himself as, well, himself, playing in Detroit in the 1960s with the likes of Pharoah ...