James Blood Ulmer

James "Blood" Ulmer was a free jazz exception: an outside guitarist who forged a style based largely on the traditions of African-American vernacular music. Ulmer was an adherent of saxophonist/composer Ornette Coleman's vaguely defined Harmolodic theory, which subverts jazz's harmonic component in favor of freely improvised, non-tonal, or quasi-modal counterpoint. Ulmer played with a stuttering, vocalic attack; his lines were often texturally and chordally based, inflected with the accent of a soul-jazz tenor saxophonist. That's not to say his sound was untouched by the rock tradition -- the influence of Jimi Hendrix on Ulmer was strong -- but it was mixed with blues, funk, and free jazz elements. The resultant music was an expressive, hard-edged, loudly amplified hybrid that is, at its best, on a level with the finest of the Harmolodic school.