Michael Sumler, who spent years working with the venerable group of soul-bunk Kool and the gang each as a person of Hype on stage and as a stylist behind the scenes, died on Sunday in a automotive accident in Georgia. He was 71 years previous.
His dying was confirmed by a band spokesman. eleventh, a tv station in Atlanta, shown That Sumler was killed after his automotive collided with one other car whereas touring on Veterans Memorial Highway in Cobb County in Georgia. Sumler, referred to as Chicago Mike, had carried out on Sunday night in Mableton, Georgia, with the group with Funk Shun, whose Michael Cooper paid tribute to Sumler on social media.
“We had no concept that the practice of affection on Sunday night would have been your final lap”, Cooper he wrote. “Rest in heavenly peace.”
In his assertion, Kool and The Gang described Sumler like “our longtime wardrobe Vallet” and mentioned he labored with the band from 2000 to 2015, “be sure that the boys have a greater on stage each evening”. Sumler “additionally thrilled the group together with his strikes of power and dance on the high of the present,” added the group.
Known for successes together with “Ladies Night”, “Jungle Boogie”, “Get on It” and “Celebration”, Kool & The Gang shaped itself within the mid -Sixties in Jersey City, New Jersey, by the brothers Robert Bell (which went to Kool) and Ronald Khalis Bell along with a number of associates of the neighborhood. Khalis Bell died in 2020; George “Funky” Brown, the band’s founder drummer, died in 2023
Among the numerous songs that borrowed parts of Kool & The Gang’s Music: “NY State of Mind” by Nas, “Feel So Good” by Mase, “I Got 5 on it”, The Wu-Tang Clan “Method Man” and “Summertime” by DJ Jazzy Jeff and The Fresh Prince.
In 2021, Kool and the band turned the primary act to carry out for a crowd with full capability on the Hollywood Bowl after an extended and unprecedented closure as a result of Covid-19 pandemic.
The data on Sumler’s survivors was not instantly out there.
