Chase Holifield - guitar, J. Showah - bass, Kinney Kimbrough - drums. UNITED STATES AND INTERNATIONAL BOOKING INQUIRIES, PLEASE EMAIL JUSTIN@HILLCOUNTRYRECORDS.COM
Influences
cotton fields, blues, the Bible, logging trucks, railroad trestles, shoeshining, Bo Diddley
Sounds Like
MY FIRST LONG PLAY CD, entitled "LONG WAYS FROM HOME" - LIMITED PRESSING OF 100 COPIES. BUY IT HERE!
TO BOOK L.C. ULMER & THE BACKWOODS BLUES BAND, CONTACT JUSTIN SHOWAH @ 662.816.4000 OR JUSTIN@HILLCOUNTRYRECORDS.COM
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L.C. Ulmer
Blues vocalist & guitarist, Ellisville, Mississippi
Lee Chester “L.C.” Ulmer is a native of south Mississippi who for 50 years played music all over the U.S.—“like horse manure, everywhere!”—before returning home to the Ellisville area in 2001. He is a multi-instrumentalist who plays guitar, keyboards, drums, fiddle, banjo mandolin, kazoo, and harmonica, and performed for many years as a “twelve piece” one-man band. Today he plays mostly just guitar at live performances, and performs mostly original compositions in a distinctive style with a propulsive boogie beat.
Ulmer was born in 1928 in Stringer, Mississippi, and later moved with his parents Luther and Mattie, six brothers, and seven sisters to a plantation near Moss Hill. His father played guitar, harmonica, and “jew’s harp.” Most of Ulmer’s siblings played music, and his mother’s cousin (Charlie Lindsey) was a bluesman. Many musicians visited the house to play and drink whiskey, the most famous being Meridian’s Jimmie Rodgers.
The plantation owner’s son ran a whiskey still, and Ulmer’s brother James hosted picnics, attracting many workers from the nearby log camp (Camp Allen) run by the E.L. Bruce lumber company. Music was also played at “fish fries” and “breakdowns” held at various homes most Fridays, Saturdays, and Sundays.
Ulmer began playing guitar when he was nine years old and was soon playing with family and other local musicians on the family’s porch. He played by himself for tips, and often played together with white musicians, and remembers old square dance numbers he used to perform. He recalls with delight listening at home to 78rpm recordings by artists including Blind Lemon Jefferson, Blind Boy Fuller, Tampa Red, and Peetie Wheatstraw,
One of Ulmer’s biggest influences was the guitarist and street musician Blind Roosevelt Graves, who Ulmer would see when he visited Laurel to visit his sister. Graves made numerous recordings in both gospel and blues in the late ‘20s and early ‘30s, and Ulmer closely studied his slide guitar technique. Ulmer later built his own slide out of stainless steel.
From age 14 to 16 Ulmer built railway trestles across Lake Pontchartrain, and for the following five years or so worked out of a camp in Heidelberg, Mississippi, building railways spurs to oil wells. During this time he played regularly at a juke joint in nearby Paulding.
In 1949 Ulmer traveled to Kansas City, Kansas, to visit his sister, and stayed there on and off for two years. He played guitar for various gospel quartets, and his blues jobs included backing Chicago-based J.B. Lenoir at a local club. From 1951-55 Ulmer was based mostly in Laurel, where he played as a one-man band at local clubs including the Top Hat, Cotton Bowl, Wagon Wheel, and Twenty Grand. He also performed in juke joints in Meridian.
Ulmer continued to travel regionally, and while working in Florida he was hired to serenade a boat captain on a trip to Cuba. In 1955 he traveled to Holbrook, Arizona, where he found work at the Motoaurant, a 24-hour establishment on Route 66 that featured a truck stop, museum, restaurant, and nightclub, “The Cock’n’Bull.” Ulmer recorded advertisement songs for the Motaurant, and met and/or played with many famous musicians there including Elvis Presley, Les Paul and Mary Ford, Brook Benton, Nat King Cole, Fats Domino, and Louis Armstrong. He also performed regularly at a lumber camp in McNair, Arizona, and at a local Mormon church.
In 1957 Ulmer moved to San Bernardino and then Hollywood, California, where he made a living playing on the streets and joined the musicians union—he still carries his original card in his wallet. He continued to travel regularly back and forth to Arizona “every three or four weeks,” traveled up through Canada up to Alaska.
Ulmer made regular returns to Mississippi to visit his parents during the ‘50s, and in 1962 moved back to Laurel, where he worked various jobs and put together a band, the Bel Air Clowns, that played local clubs. In 1964 and 1965 he lived in Picayune and Pascagoula, where he worked at a missile plant, and following a brief stay in Laurel moved to Joliet, Illinois, where he lived for the next 37 years. In Joliet Ulmer worked construction, ran his own automotive shop, operated a tow truck, and performed regularly as a one-man-band and served as “host” at clubs including Club 99, Black Diamond, Big Ten, “Cindy Edwards juke,” the Hillcrest, and “Joe Howard’s.” He refused to play at the “South orea, so named because “when you went there you had to fight--if you didn’t you’d get walked on.”
In Joliet he performed on shows with Chicago-based blues artists including Muddy Waters, Elmore James, Howlin’ Wolf, Buddy Guy, Hound Dog Taylor, Jimmy Reed, Sonny Thompson, and many others. Another local blues musician in Joliet was his cousin Shorty Howorth from Bay Springs, Mississippi. Ulmer experimented with various sorts of instruments, including an early synthesizer and a Gretsch White Falcon, which required two amplifiers and cost $1,800 when Ulmer purchased it new in 1965.
Since returning to Mississippi in 2001 Ulmer has performed locally as well as at the Juke Joint Festival in Clarksdale, The Shed Blues Festival in Ocean Springs, and at the Blues Today Symposium in Oxford. In June 2007 he performed at the Roots and Blues Festival in Parma, Italy. Ulmer often performs together with his student Chase Holifield (b. 1991), who lives near Ulmer’s home, which is located between Laurel and Ellisville.
-Scott Barretta
FEATURING: NOVA ROMA JOSH&ADAM TILL THE SHINE WEARS OFF SOMETHING REAL SIMPLE CRUSHING OPHEILA ROCK BOTTOM-------------FIRST SHOW WITH THE NEW LINEUP!!!!!!!!!!!!! . PLUS DJ DEVO- HIPHOP&DANCE UPSTAIRS
My wife Tricia and I are really looking forward to having you at the future site of Tricia's Italian Resuraunt and Pie Hole during the Juke Joint Festival.
L.C. Ulmer, I love the BLUES. Thank you for being My Friend on My Space site filled with amazing links to Music, Spirit, Love and Peace. Joy and Happiness to you Now and Always. Love and Light to All, This is Anita aka Angelwingss7 in Ontario, Canada.
Hello from Hot House! We have your video posted in our IBC Competitor Video Showcase right now. We are running them in 6-hour rotation up until show time in Memphis! Good luck and enjoy the trip!
LEE BOYS @ The Thirsty Hippo Jan. 29th! Lee Boys will be making a stop in H'Burg during their tour w The Travelin' McCoury's and fresh off a performance on Conan O'Brien and shows w The Allman Brothers
From heaven above arrives a fascination, It..s a personal, glory innovation To be honest, thankfull and true - Holy night, I trust in you, cause you give freedom to everyone, You spend much love and also fun. I treasure Christmas through the years, It..s a magic time, which disappears. But it comes back again and again, I..m indeed a Christmas - fan.
I wish you and your family a merry christmas Love & Peace
WE ARE VERY SAD... WE DON'T HAVE WORDS TO SAY ANYMORE... OUR SINGER AND DOBRO PLAYER ENRICO MICHELETTI IS DEAD. GOODBYE ENRICO KEEP THE BLUES ALIVE WHEREVER YOU ARE!!!!
Online Now!
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