Jazzman Julius Hemphill is born in Fort Worth

This Week in Texas Music History, we add another chapter to Fort Worth’s weighty tome of experimental jazz.

***This Week In Texas Music History is supported by Brane Audio***

Episodes written by Jason Mellard, Alan Schaefer, and Avery Armstrong

On January 24, 1938, Julius Hemphill was born in Fort Worth. An alto and soprano saxophonist, flutist, vocalist, composer, and label founder, Hemphill blazed a trail through the avant-garde jazz landscape in a variety of outfits, including solo performances, duos, small ensembles, big bands, and multidisciplinary collaborations.

Hemphill attended Fort Worth’s I.M. Terrell high school, where he was a football star and studied music with noted clarinetist and composer John Carter. Hemphill worked with rhythm & blues and jazz acts around the Southwest until 1966 when he moved to St. Louis. There, he was a founding member of the Black Artists Group, a multi-disciplinary collective of artists, musicians, dramatists, dancers, and activists. He established his own record label, Mbari, in 1971, and released The Collected Poem of Blind Lemon Jefferson, a collaboration with poet Curtis K. Lyle. In 1972 he recorded Dogon AD, featuring the cellist Abdul Wadud, with whom Hemphill developed a significant ongoing partnership. Both projects pushed the boundaries of jazz performance in the Black Power era. 

In 1977,the Italian label Black Saint released the album Materials and Residuals and helped to amplify Hemphill’s profile abroad. That same year Hemphill released a multi-tracked flute, soprano, and alto saxophone record, Roi Boyé & The Gotham Minstrels: An Audio-Drama. Hemphill then co-founded the World Saxophone Quartet, a four-horn ensemble that could swing even without a traditional rhythm section. 

His final recording, 1994’s Five Chord Stud, found Hemphill in failing health and unable to blow for the session, but he still composed the music and conducted the studio ensemble. He passed in 1995, a stellar artist from the virtual firmament of Fort Worth’s I. M. Terrell alumni, as Ornette Coleman, King Curtis, Dewey Redman, and Prince Lasha also walked its halls in their high school years.

Sources:

Julius Hemphill, interview by Suzanne McElfresh, Bomb, January 1, 1994. 

Dave Oliphant. Texan Jazz. Austin: University of Texas Press, 1996.

Seymour Wright, “A short guide to Julius Hemphill,” The Wire, March 2021.

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