James Blood Ulmer and Free Jazz

When, in July 2005, James Blood Ulmer added to his musical rap sheet a solo acoustic blues album titled "Birthright," critics and fans were grateful but a little confused. The album, stark and stunning, attracted comparisons to the very finest blues albums in existence, but it was an unexpected offering from a guitarist with Ulmer's background. "Birthright" drew a flood of praise that drowned out critical questions about Ulmer, his music, and the dual traditions to which it belongs.

Born in South Carolina in 1942, Ulmer began his career playing in gospel, funk, and then jazz groups. In 1973, when Ulmer met Ornette Coleman and immersed himself in Coleman's vaguely defined Harmolodic theory of free jazz improvisation,[1]Kelsey). Over the next twenty years his albums were notorious, loudly amplified, free-blowing affairs, recorded with a surprisingly stable lineup of likeminded free jazz players. On these albums, Ulmer played with fire, always probing the limits of what could be done with a guitar.
he began making a name as one of free jazz's only notable guitarists (

By the 1990s, Ulmer's music had lost its "New Thing" edge and most critics agreed his inventiveness was slipping. His albums, coming along every two to three years, became steadily more predictably structured as well as metrically and harmonically regular. Ulmer even recorded an entirely blues-rock cover album at Sun Studios (of Elvis fame). The most generous critical reaction at the time cast Ulmer as an explorer (rather than a drifter): "Since the end of the last decade, James Blood Ulmer has been involved in a conscious investigation of the blues as a force for reinvention" (Jurek). But while some blues fans applauded Ulmer's "new direction", many others, as well as jazz fans and critics, respectfully withheld their congratulations.