James Blood Ulmer's BIRTHRIGHT Voted "Blues Album Of The Year" In Downbeat Magazine's 2005 Reader's Poll
Wednesday, November 16, 2005
Earlier this year, the legendary American music iconoclast, James Blood Ulmer, released his first ever solo recording, Birthright. The album, which features Ulmer alone on vocals and guitar, quickly drew critical acclaim, garnering praise from the likes of national publications such as DownBeat, Guitar Player, Jazz Times, Jazziz, Living Blues, No Depression and Rolling Stone, while newspapers including the Chicago Sun Times, Minneapolis City Pages, Seattle Post Intelligencer and The Washington Post declared it one of this year's most important blues records. Now, James Blood Ulmer's Birthright has been voted "Blues Album of the Year" in DownBeat Magazine's 70th Annual Readers Poll. The poll, based solely on votes by DownBeat's readers, validates the critical praise Birthright has received by reflecting the opinion of the fans. It's a well-deserved honor for an artist whose music has undergone a creative renaissance and commercial rediscovery in recent years. Long regarded as one of the most inventive guitarists of his generation, Ulmer's reputation has slowly morphed from avant-garde jazz visionary to an elder statesman of the blues. In fact, Ulmer covers all this ground and more.
Produced by Vernon Reid, the 12-track Birthright is far and away the most stark and deeply personal work of Ulmer's career. Based primarily on original material, songs like "Geechee Joe", "Take My Music Back To The Church", "Where Did All the Girls Come From", "The Evil One" and "White Man's Jail" deal directly with Ulmer's upbringing in segregated South Carolina and his migration North as a working musician. Ulmer continually confronts the church, trying to make amends with his past. Raised a strict Baptist, his career in secular music was long viewed by his parents as the devil's work. It's fascinating to watch Ulmer's public struggle unfold through these songs. On Birthright, Ulmer also tackles two classics of the blues' idiom, "Sittin' On Top of the World" and "I Ain't Superstitious", and completely reinvents them with his idiosyncratic guitar tuning and guttural vocal moan that harkens back to the blues most primitive origins in Africa, yet simultaneously sounding amongst the most modern blues of the day. The album is rounded out by two instrumental pieces, "Love Dance Rag" and "High Yellow", which are gloriously free and abstract guitar meditations.
|
