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  • Bad Blood In The City: The Piety Street Sessions

    9355

    Artist: James Blood Ulmer

    Label: Hyena Records

    James Blood Ulmer has experienced an artistic renaissance over the past decade. The acclaimed guitarist, who came to national recognition under the auspices of Ornette Coleman and was behind some of the 1980’s most visionary jazz recordings, has grown into an elder statesman of the blues. Through a series of celebrated albums with producer Vernon Reid, including Memphis Blood: The Sun Sessions, No Escape From The Blues: The Electric Lady Session and Birthright, Ulmer demonstrated a gift for reinventing songs from the American blues canon, while simultaneously developing his own voice as a songwriter in the idiom.

    On Bad Blood In The City: The Piety Street Sessions, James Blood Ulmer’s most recent collaboration with Vernon Reid and The Memphis Blood Blues Band, it’s his own material that carries the day. Built around a cycle of songs which directly address Hurricane Katrina and its aftermath, Ulmer has delivered one of the most stirring and emotionally powerful albums of his career. There are also a handful of interpretations that serve to further explore Katrina’s sub-plot of race, poverty and struggle, including readings of Son House’s “Grinnin’ In Your Face,” Junior Kimbrough’s “Sad Days, Lonely Nights,” John Lee Hooker’s “This Land Is No One’s Land,” Bessie Smith’s “Backwater Blues,” Howlin Wolf’s “Commit A Crime” and Willie Dixon’s “Dead Presidents.”

    When producer Vernon Reid was asked why record an album based around Hurricane Katrina now, he responded: “"It’s a...

  • Birthright

    9335

    Artist: James Blood Ulmer

    Label: Hyena Records

    "The blues - ancient and modern, from Blind Willie McTell to Ornette Coleman - have always run deep in this South Carolinian's black rock and future jazz. But on Birthright, there is nothing but blues: just Ulmer's subterranean rock-slide moan and spider dance guitar improvisations, in stark, original memoirs...Ulmer has taken the long road home...But he sounds like he never left"
    -- David Fricke, Rolling Stone

  • No Escape From The Blues

    9312

    Artist: James Blood Ulmer

    Label: Hyena Records

    Following up 2001's Grammy Award-nominated Memphis Blood: The Sun Sessions, James Blood Ulmer returns with No Escape From The Blues: The Electric Lady Sessions. Produced by Living Colour’s Vernon Reid and recorded at the fabled Electric Lady Studios, Ulmer’s latest effort continues in the spirit of its predecessor, reinventing the blues in Ulmer’s own incomparable style. The album’s concept reflects the blues' migration from the rural south to the booming urban metropolis of New York City; a journey paralleled in Ulmer's own life having grown up in the deep south, but staking his claim as a revered guitarist in NYC's downtown loft jazz scene. Throughout the date, Ulmer is down right sanctified, delivering career defining vocal performances on blues standards including "Ghetto Child," "Trouble In Mind" and "Come On (Let the Good Times Roll)," while his guitar work is electrified, purely authentic and instantly recognizable. Special guests include Queen Esther and Olu Dara.

  • Memphis Blood: The Sun Sessions

    9310

    Artist: James Blood Ulmer

    Label: Hyena Records

    Some of his previous work hinted that free-jazz guitarist James Blood Ulmer could do something interesting in the blues form, but Memphis Blood may surprise his admirers with its impressive display of respect and knowledge in a set of much-loved blues from the repertoires of Muddy Waters, Sonny Boy Williamson, John Lee Hooker and, above all, Howlin' Wolf, the point of origin of five of the selections. There is nothing invariable about the Ulmerising process: the bursts of noise guitar in "I Just Want to Make Love to You" and "I Asked for Water (She Gave Me Gasoline)" are outnumbered by the less dramatic, more conventional Chicago blues arrangements of "Little Red Rooster," "Evil," and Otis Rush's "Double Trouble," and a long but compelling reading of Son House's "Death Letter." David Barnes's harmonica and producer Vernon Reid's guitar are stylistically right on the money, too, but the album's chief revelation is that Ulmer is a natural blues singer. --Tony Russel