Sumlin was inducted into the Blues Foundation Hall of Fame in 2008. His final recording, just days before his death, was tracks for an album by Stephen Dale Petit, Cracking The Code (333 Records). He underwent lung removal surgery the same year, but he continued performing until just before his death. His last solo album was About Them Shoes, released in 2004 by Tone-Cool Records. He also recorded under his own name, beginning with a session from a tour of Europe with Wolf in 1964. Upon Wolf's death in 1976, Sumlin continued playing with several other members of Wolf's band, as the Wolf Gang, until about 1980. Sumlin performing in France, December 17, 1975, five days before recording My Guitar and Me Sumlin played on the album Howlin' Wolf (called the "rocking chair album", with reference to its cover illustration), which was named the third greatest guitar album of all time by Mojo magazine in 2004. According to Sumlin, Howlin' Wolf sent him to a classical guitar instructor at the Chicago Conservatory of Music to learn keyboards and scales. Williams left the band in 1955, leaving Sumlin as the primary guitarist, a position he held almost continuously (except for a brief spell playing with Muddy Waters around 1956) for the remainder of Wolf's career. In Chicago, Wolf hired the guitarist Jody Williams, but in 1954 he invited Sumlin to move to Chicago to play second guitar in his band. Wolf relocated from Memphis to Chicago in 1953, but his longtime guitarist Willie Johnson chose not to join him. ![]() As a boy, he met Howlin' Wolf by sneaking into a performance. He got his first guitar when he was eight years old. Sumlin was born in Greenwood, Mississippi, and raised in Hughes, Arkansas. He was ranked number 43 in Rolling Stone 's "100 Greatest Guitarists of All Time". Hubert Charles Sumlin (Novem– December 4, 2011) was a Chicago blues guitarist and singer, best known for his "wrenched, shattering bursts of notes, sudden cliff-hanger silences and daring rhythmic suspensions" as a member of Howlin' Wolf's band.
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