Judy Nitzinger
Legendary Fort Worth rocker John Nitzinger on stage at Stumpy's.
A long-running blues club in Arlington known for hosting both national and hometown talent is the latest local live music venue to close.
Stumpy’s Blues Bar, which opened nearly 30 years ago on Division Street in Arlington, closed in late March.
According to posts on its Facebook page, the club may have closed due to owner Jeff Cook wanting to retire. Musicians who frequented the club say it might have closed because of a rent increase. Cook didn’t return calls for comment.
The club closed on March 30 after a final performance from the band Velvet Love Box.
“It was wall to wall people, a line out the door,” says Velvet Love Box guitarist Scot Cloud, whose band has been performing at the venue for 20 years. “It was a well-loved place. The people who went there didn’t have any pretense about them. They just loved live music.”
True to the venue’s name, Stumpy’s Blues Bar hosted performances from local, regional and nationally-known blues and rock acts, from Buddy Whittington and Holland K. Smith to Bugs Henderson and John Nitzinger. In the club’s early years, Robert Ealey played there occasionally and members of Pantera would sometimes drop by to jam.
“I ran a jam session there every Sunday night for years and it attracted all kinds of players,” says Bobby Counts, a lifelong Fort Worth musician who has opened for Frank Sinatra and toured with the Bellamy Brothers. “Anything and everything that was in the realm of blues or rock, you’d see at Stumpy’s. And sometimes they’d have bands that didn’t easily slip into specific genres. But no matter who was playing, people were into it.”
Musicians and fans have been sharing their favorite memories of Stumpy’s on the club’s Facebook page. “Eighteen years ago, I took my wife there on one of our first dates,” wrote fan Bill Hallman. Mary Bevars, another fan, wrote, “I was able to take my daughters there to see what I love so much.” Local musician Greg Walling, who plays in a local band called The Boogie Men, posted photos of the cover art of his group’s CD, which were taken at Stumpy’s.
John Nitzinger, a well-known singer and guitarist who was recently inducted into Texas Music Legends Hall of Fame, affectionately recalled a time when one of the bartenders asked him and his band to not play so loud.
“They came up to me and said, `Hey, can you guys turn it down so I can hear people’s orders?,’” the 75-year-old, Fort Worth-based musician recalled. “So I asked the audience if they wanted me to turn it down. They said, `No, turn it up! We had the best fans there.’”
Stumpy’s originally opened in 1996 at 501 E. Division St., in a space previously occupied by local watering hole and club Zooby’s Roadhouse. One of the club’s early fans, Paul “Woody” Woodruff, loved the place so much, he eventually became a business partner.
“Woody was so passionate about music,” says Walling, who played the club many times over the years. “People who remember the early days of Stumpy’s remember Woody as the guy who was always there, holding court, always cheering on whoever was playing.”
Woodruff eventually became one of the club’s booking agents; he passed away in 2010.
“Music is kind of a strange mistress,” Walling says. “Some clubs are easy to work with and some aren’t. Woody was always on the up and up. He treated us great.”
In the mid-’90s, Stumpy’s was one of the few clubs in Arlington hosting live blues bands several nights a week.
“It was a real happening place,” says Holland K. Smith, a Fort Worth native and longtime blues musician whose songs have been recorded by George Thorogood, among others. “At that point, they were doing live music four or five nights a week. There weren’t too many places doing blues in Arlington back then. It was a cool, cool spot.”
Musicians wouldn’t exactly get rich performing there, Nitzinger recalls.
“They didn’t pay nothing,” he says. “We usually got $100 a man and there were three of us in the band, so we got $300. But we were all about the music, not the money.”
In 2004, Stumpy’s moved to bigger digs a few miles to the west at 2811 W. Division St., former site of a Fast Freddy’s pool hall. There, Stumpy’s remained for the next 19 years, save for a break it took during the pandemic.
Before it became Fast Freddy’s and a second home to Stumpy’s, the W. Division building housed a well-known pawn shop beloved by local musicians, says Buddy Whittington, an acclaimed Fort Worth guitarist who toured, recorded and wrote with blues legend John Mayall.
“It was called Trader’s Paradise, it was pretty famous, at least with musicians,” says Whittington, another veteran of Stumpy’s. “It was huge, two stories full of all kinds of musical equipment. I even found a guitar there that had been stolen from me. The owners gave it back.”
The stretch of W. Division upon which Stumpy’s lived for nearly two decades has historical significance, as it was once a part of the Bankhead Highway, a series of early roadways that cut through several areas of North Texas, including west Fort Worth.
Some of the businesses that opened during the Bankhead’s formative years remain, including the neon-lit Pearl’s Cherokee Lounge and Lester’s Motor Inn.
The Stumpy’s building is owned by Arlington businessman John Morrow, who says Stumpy’s rent was recently raised. “It was basically just a cost-of-living increase,” he says. “Just to cover taxes and the day-to-day costs associated with the property.”
Morrow’s family has been instrumental in developing the area. In 1948, his grandparents, Sam and Jo Dale Lester, moved to Arlington and began opening businesses along the Bankhead, including the roadside motel Lester’s Motor Inn, which still bears their name.
Stumpy’s is the latest addition to a growing list of local live music venues to shutter recently, following Lola’s Saloon, The Post, the Twilite Lounge, and others. Scot Cloud from Velvet Love Box thinks the closings are a reflection of a struggling music industry.
“I think right now the music industry is a shell of what it used to be,” says Cloud from Velvet Love Box. “The only people making money are the huge, huge stars or the people at the top of the streaming companies.
“But live music will always be a thing that people want for entertainment,” he says. “Music venues come and go, they always have. We’ve lost a lot lately. I think it’s cyclical. Sometimes we have a surplus of places to play, and sometimes we don’t. But there will always be places to play.”
