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Raw Power – Summer Reup 1
9 Jul2007
Originally posted 10 July 2006.
OPEN HOUSE
BLACK ROCK
James Blood Ulmer
Black Rock
Columbia : 1982
JBU, lead guitar, vocals; Ronnie Drayton, rhythm guitar; Amin Ali, bass; Calvin Weston, drums and backing vocals on â??Black Rockâ?; Cornell Rochester, drums.
Chilly Jay Chill: To paraphrase P-Funk, who says a jazz band canâ??t play rock?
Prof. Drew Le Drew: They play it so well that Iâ??m kind of surprised this isnâ??t just classified as rock, straight up. Or, if this is jazz: nice.
CJC: It definitely blurs the line. â??Open Houseâ? has some serious funk in it, too. And â??Black Rockâ? is practically heavy metal. In fact, this album was cited in Chuck Eddyâ??s Stairway to Hell: The 500 Best Heavy Metal Albums of All Time. Album #203, with a bullet.
DLD: I’m glad you know that.
CJC: Although it didnâ??t do as well as other avant jazz albums like Miles Davisâ?? Agharta (#141) or Sonny Sharrockâ??s Guitar (#84), for whatever thatâ??s worth. Interesting book.
DLD: I guess it makes a certain amount of sense since the lead track sounds like the template for everything Living Colour ever did. Except it completely one-ups their entire catalog.
CJC: And I guess itâ??s partly jazz because of how effortlessly Ulmer synthesizes all the different styles. They just flow through him. And you can still hear some of the harmolodic ideas he picked up playing with Ornette Coleman.
DLD: Why hasnâ??t Columbia reissued this? Or any of Ulmerâ??s work for that matter? It’s a cultural crime of the highest (or lowest) order that this material isn’t widely available — if only for download.
CJC: Our friend Harold says Columbia is â??the label where jazz musicians go to dieâ? and maybe heâ??s right. At least their albums die in the vaults from neglect. Incidentally, Ulmerâ??s been doing some great work recently. Back in Time by his Odyssey Band is one of the best, ahem, jazz releases of 2006.
Suggested reading: Ellroy, James. White Jazz.
8 Responses to Raw Power – Summer Reup 1
hungrych
July 9th, 2007 at 3:51 am
Thank you! Whatever it is, this is awesome.
This could certainly be a main inspiration of Living Colour, especially considering Vernon Reid’s involvement with Ulmer in recent years.
peterbreslin
July 9th, 2007 at 6:20 pm
Hi hungrych- Reid was also involved with Ronald Shannon Jackson back in 1980, playing on Eye On You, for example. RSJ contributes remarkable drumming to Ulmer’s Are You Glad to be In America? among others. Which reminds me- if you guys get a chance to hear the original Rough Trade mix of Are You Glad to be in America? it’s worth a listen. The mix released in the US on Artist’s House, was actually sped up and cleaned up significantly.
Anyway, Reid and Ulmer go way back, almost 30 years.
PB
cjc
July 9th, 2007 at 7:34 pm
Peter – is that the Rough Trade version the mix used on the CD of Are You Glad to Be in America released on DIW some years back? that’s the main one I’m familiar with. doesn’t sound overly polished, but then i could be wrong. You remind me that Eye on You is a great one. Gotta post some tracks from that soonish.
peterbreslin
July 10th, 2007 at 3:02 pm
Hey- Not sure which mix was used on the DIW release. I only remember that Rough Trade 16, which is the original release, sounded remarkably different to me from the Artist’s House release. Much grittier and a few cuts actually at a slower tempo. I don’t have both to A/B but maybe someone can confirm my senile memory?
Yes, Eye on You is a lovely and strange beast.
PB
fairest
July 10th, 2007 at 11:44 pm
great stuff. thanks.
Jerry
July 11th, 2007 at 11:09 am
JBU rocks hard for sure. If you like jazz guys that rock, check out New Orleans’ Bonerama (http://www.bonerama.net, not to be confused with bonerama.com ). The core of the group is comprised of 4 trombone players. In addition to some great originals, they’ve adapted some rock classics for trombones: Allman Bros.’ “Whipping Post”, Led Zeppelin’s “Ocean”, Beatles’ “Helter Skelter” and Hendrix’ “Crosstown Traffic” and “Purple Haze” for example.
Yulun Wang
July 15th, 2007 at 1:00 pm
Thanks for the ¨Back in Time¨mention. Check out “Open Doors” on that CD, essentially the same song as “Open House.” Not sure why Blood renamed it. While “Back in Time” was issued under the “Odyssey Band” moniker for contractual reasons, it’s a James Blood album through and through. While most of the CD was released as performed in the studio, with Blood almost exclusively using unison tuning and playing in a harmolodic style, on “Open Doors” he went back and and overdubbed a howling guitar solo using regular tuning on his Steinberger guitar, recreating Ronnie Drayton´s solo on the original recording. The overall performance is far less frenetic, more akin to the sound found on the original ¨Odyssey¨ record. Well worth checking out for fans of JBU.
centrifuge
July 18th, 2007 at 9:40 am
heh, white jazz, that’s some hard-boiled reading right there…
thanks for these two, guys – i must admit i’ve only just seen them
they groove a hell of a lot harder than anything by living colour (a band i tried, but ultimately failed, to like at the time… reid was a good soloist though) – it’s a weird one really, rock ‘n roll is inescapably black music – so how did rock as such end up being so very very white..? and if living colour set out to change all that, they pretty much failed resoundingly… possibly it didn’t help that at the time they started out, the predominant commercial trends in heavy metal were complete bollocks – actually it was a terrible time unless your money was on the right horse, since (though very few realised it) the creative growth was being channelled through slayer and subsequently death metal… another story (though fwiw two members of suffocation, one of the most influential american dm bands, were black – at least at first)
i have a weakness for this sort of stuff if it’s done very well – otherwise i find it eminently resistible – and blood lays down some heavy shit there. i know his recordings are supposed to be erratic, but i like everything i’ve heard.
ulmer relates (somewhere or other) that ornette said to him early on “blood, the natural way you play is harmolodic”… just as well he spoke it as a first language, saved him having to get his head round it later ;-)