James Blood Ulmer, adventurous US guitarist and vocalist, dies aged 86

James Blood Ulmer, the US guitarist celebrated for his avant garde splicing of jazz, blues and funk, has died aged 86.

A statement on social media said he died on 3 June. “His music was fearless, and so was his spirit,” his family added in another statement.

Born Willie James Ulmer in South Carolina in 1940, Ulmer’s music career started out in funk bands, shuttling from Pittsburgh to Columbus to Detroit – and backed musicians such as Jewel Bryner and Hank Marr – before settling in New York in the early 1970s. “I ain’t never thought nobody could make no money playing free music,” he later said. “So I always played structured blues, rhythm playing, dance music, or something like that. And I abandoned it! When I came to New York, it was like … I just went totally another way.”

As well as playing there with Art Blakey, Joe Henderson and Rashied Ali, Ulmer was mentored by Ornette Coleman, who schooled him in his “harmolodic” theory: avoiding regular keys and harmonics in favour of a freer approach to sound. That spirit would inform Ulmer’s entire career from then on, characterised as it was by instinctive, unbounded playing even as Ulmer began to embrace songwriting.

Coleman co-produced Ulmer’s debut album Tales of Captain Black, and Ulmer released his next album, Are You Glad to Be in America?, on the UK’s Rough Trade label: the spirited social commentary on the title track made it a signature song, and he ended up supporting punk and rock bands such as Public Image Ltd and Captain Beefheart. Of crowds at these gigs, he later said: “I’d stand at the microphone and tell them to shut the fuck up. They had five minutes to get into it or get the fuck out!”

He collaborated with jazz saxophonist Arthur Blythe, contributing to his album Lenox Avenue Breakdown (1979) and Illusions (1980): released on Columbia, the sessions earned Ulmer a Columbia record deal of his own. The three albums he put out with Columbia between 1981 and 1983 – Free Lancing, Black Rock and Odyssey – were remarkably progressive for a major label, though not devoid of commerciality, as Ulmer paired virtuosic bluesy guitar with tight funk arrangements and soulful singing. Free Lancing had him hailed in Rolling Stone as “the most original electric guitarist to emerge since the late Jimi Hendrix”.

Ulmer also formed a separate band, Music Revelation Ensemble, featuring saxophonist David Murray, bassist Amin Ali and drummer Ronald Shannon Jackson, who put out their debut No Wave in 1980 and would end up releasing six more albums. Another group, Phalanx, reconnected him with Ali.

After the Columbia years, Ulmer was briefly signed to Blue Note for 1987’s America – Do You Remember the Love?, and continued to release studio albums during the 1990s and 2000s as he focused less on jazz and more on blues. Blue Blood (2001) featured an impressive band including Bill Laswell, Amina Claudine Myers and Funkadelic’s Bernie Worrell; released the same year, Memphis Blood: The Sun Sessions earned Ulmer his only Grammy nomination, for best traditional blues album.