James Blood Ulmer, the avant-garde jazz, funk, and blues guitarist, died on June 3 at the age of 86, reports NPR. In a statement, Ulmer’s family said his “music was fearless, and so was his spirit.”

Born Willie James Ulmer in St. Matthews, South Carolina in 1940, Ulmer received his first guitar at the age of four, and later got his start playing in funk and R&B bands. Following stints in Pittsburgh, Columbus, and Detroit, he made his way to New York City, where he was hired by the house band at legendary jazz club Minton's Playhouse. He eventually connected with saxophonist Arthur Blythe, leading to appearances on Blythe’s albums Lenox Avenue Breakdown and Illusions. By 1973, Ulmer had become a mentee of Ornette Coleman, learning the latter’s free-jazz system of harmolodics, which quickly informed Ulmer’s unique approach to tuning.

“I had this dream about this tuning, where I tuned all of the strings to the same note,” he recalled to Bandcamp in 2017. “I went to Coleman’s room—he was sleeping—and I said, ‘Wake up, listen to this.’ I started playing, and he got his horn and started playing. He said, ‘Give me C,’ and I said, ‘I ain’t got no C, I ain’t got no F, I ain’t got no G, I ain’t got none of them chords—I can’t make chords because I ain’t got but one note, really.’ That tuning freed me… I could play without following or copying anybody. It was great.”

Ulmer released dozens of solo albums across nearly five decades, including Black Rock and Odyssey on Columbia. He also formed the Music Revelation Ensemble in the 1980s, with saxophonist David Murray, bassist Amin Ali, and drummer Ronald Shannon Jackson. By the 2000s, Ulmer had recorded a series of blues albums produced by Vernon Reid. He played his final concert in 2024 before retiring.

“Music is not for judgin’,” Ulmer told Wax Poetics in 2004. “You listen to it and take what you can get from it. Put it in your pocket and keep movin’.

Revisit our 2007 review of Ulmer’s Bad Blood in the City: The Piety Street Sessions.