James Blood Ulmer (1940–2026)

[gypsy tail wind]

Nate Chinen beschreibt in seinem Nachruf auf Ulmer (NPR) ganz gut dessen Herkunft und Stil, dünkt mich. Und statt das irgendwo zu versenken starte ich einfach mal einen neuen Faden.

Fearlessness was fundamental in Ulmer's music, which came firmly rooted in the blues but could often sound heat-warped, hallucinatory and feral. These qualities, along with an openness to possibility, endeared him to the free-jazz forefather Ornette Coleman, with whom he started collaborating in the early 1970s. Ulmer became the most devoted acolyte of Coleman's concept of Harmolodics, which frees musicians from strict adherence to a key. The system, which perplexed many musicians and critics, made instinctual sense to Ulmer, who tuned each of his six strings to the same note.

He developed a style that blended drones with dissonance, composure with abandon, and found musicians who could range as far and freely as he did — vanguardists like the tenor saxophonist David Murray and drummers Ronald Shannon Jackson and G. Calvin Weston. Covering a show by this cohort in 1979, the New York Times critic Robert Palmer praised "the freshest and most visceral new music this reviewer has heard lately." Two years later, marking the release of Ulmer's album Free Lancing, Palmer declared him "the most original electric guitarist to emerge since the late Jimi Hendrix."

Ulmer shared with Hendrix a sense of intrepid danger in his guitar solos, along with the expressive timbral and textural devices that often call the word "psychedelic" to mind; his vocal style could evoke Hendrix's, too. But he was altogether more daring with tonality, and in performance he was a wildcard: he could dig into a syncopated funk pocket in one moment and succumb to a fever dream in the next.

https://www.npr.org/2026/06/08/nx-s1-58 ... r-obituary

Drüben im Archiv gibt es natürlich einen informativen Faden:
https://forum.rollingstone.de/foren/top ... d-ulmer-2/

[vorgarten]

puh, das ist hart. jamaaladeen tacuma und grant calvin weston hatten kürzlich fotos gepostet, nachdem sie ulmer am krankenbett besucht hatten, das sah nicht gut aus.

es ist nicht einfach, ulmer musikalisch auf den punkt zu bringen, ich hatte für mich, nachdem ich mich zuletzt durchs komplette werk gehört habe, auch nur das fazit, dass das ein komplett origineller weg war, in fast allen musikalischen parametern: sound, tonalität, beziehung leadstimme/begleitung, stimmung, herkunft, bandkonzept... wenn ulmer jazz gespielt hat, war das anders als das, was von anderen kam, aber genauso auch, wenn er funk oder blues gespielt hat. die 1980er, in denen er so populär war, habe ich nur noch in den ausläufern mitbekommen, aber das music revelation ensemble (gab es ja bis zum ende der 90er) war ja nicht weniger einflussreich, wenn man an the thing u.a. denkt.

es gibt nicht allzuviele leute, auch nicht im jazz, die auf ihre art wirklich alles anders gemacht haben. und das war für mich einer von mehreren, aber der wirklich speziellste weg in den jazz.

[vorgarten]

“I’m trying to do music that doesn’t have anything to do with the piano,” Blood said. “More like African music.” To that end, he developed his own unique guitar tunings, which amplify his alternative resonance, allowing him to create a more-like-African dronescape that vibrates across the border separating sound and mood. When Blood altered the resonance pattern of his guitar to make it produce the sound he strove for, he—like John Lee Hooker and Son House before him—performed the sort of disruptive recombination that is at the heart of African-American innovation.

melvin gibbs hat aus traurigem anlass nochmal seinen allerersten text veröffentlicht, über ulmer vor dessen 80. geburtstag.

[soulpope]

https://www.robertchristgau.com/get_artist2.php?id=629

Pointiert schrullige James "Blood" Ulmer LP Besprechungen von Robert Christgau ....