FW, 10.1.2022

The passing, within a few days of each other, of Pharaoh Sanders, Mark Hitt, and Sumter Bruton reminds us that a generation of musical titans is moving on.

Pharaoh was, of course, the free jazz firebrand whose tenor upped the intensity ante on late Coltrane sides like Ascension and Meditation. Signed to Impulse, Pharaoh then undertook a series of recordings (notably Karma, Tauhid, and Summun, Bukmun, Umyun) on which that unremitting energy took on a spiritual cast. He went on to work with collaborators as disparate as John's widow Alice Coltrane and pop R&B vocalist Phyllis Hyman. His 1977 album Pharaoh, with the guitarist Tisziji Munoz, is the most sought-after item from the India Navigation catalog. His 2021 release Promises with the composer Sam Shepherd (aka Floating Points) and the London Symphony Orchestra received wide critical acclaim. A distinctive voice is stilled.

Mark was an influential and revered guitarist who made his name on the highly competitive '70s New York area cover band circuit with the band Rat Race Choir, an outfit that filled bars all over Long Island and upstate New York that were also frequented by the likes of Twisted Sister, Harlequin, and the Good Rats. (The 2014 doco We Are Fucking Twisted Sister! is worth viewing to get a flavor of that scene.) I saw his RRC drummer Steve Luongo with John Entwistle at Caravan of Dreams in 1999; I understand Mark toured with an earlier lineup of that band. Like a lot of players who made a living playing other people's music, Hitt was not recorded extensively, but there are numerous examples of his mastery on YouTube, and he had a track on the 2013 compilation The $100 Guitar Project.

Sumter was a scholar of blues, swing, and bebop, and the pre-eminent exponent of T-Bone Walker guitar style. Back in 1978-1981, the Juke Jumpers -- the band he formed with Ohio-via-Woodstock expat Jim Colegrove -- was the band I saw most often after the Nervebreakers. Sumter was a handful of rockaroll kids, including Freddie Cisneros, Jackie Newhouse, and Mike Buck, who started playing with Fort Worth blues eminence Robert Ealey at Black clubs around town in the early '70s, famously documented on the T-Bone Burnett-recorded Live at the New Blue Bird Nite Club (reissued a couple of years ago on the Record Town label). The Bluebird was as close to Nirvana as your humble chronicler o' events will experience in this life, a place where Como neighborhood folks, gassed-back hair/soul-patch sporting white blues guys, hipis, and punks rubbed shoulders with TCU frat/sorority kids and their parents who used to go see Howlin' Wolf and Bobby Bland at the Skyliner Ballroom in the early '60s. Stirring times were had by all.

Sumter's dad, a big band drummer from New Jersey, got stranded in Fort Worth and opened Record Town on University Drive in 1957 (year of my genesis). When I came here to open Peaches at 6393 Camp Bowie Blvd in 1978, he still had a second location at 6333 Camp Bowie, where I used to go on my work lunches to hear the cantankerous old Yank bag on my employer. Big Sumter told me his eldest son (Sumter III's younger brother Stephen grew up to play with Kris Kristofferson, among others) used to sneak downstairs when he was a tyke to spin his favorite sides, which he recognized by the colors of their labels. 

I was fortunate to be the recipient of numerous free guitar lessons, which Sumter dispensed from behind the counter at Record Town, and when I became aware, in the early Aughts, that college kids were buying records again because they were cheap, I bought a turntable from Sumter and started back collecting vinyl. I didn't see what was coming. (I also got his old copy of Bobby Bland's Two Steps from the Blues. Evidence below.) If you're from Fort Worth and dig music, chances are you have a story or two involving Sumter. If you don't know what the fuss was about Fort Worth blues but want to find out, go see Ray Reed or James Hinkle at the next opportunity. Don't take tomorrow for granted.