15 Facts About Sam Myers

Samuel Joseph Myers was an American blues musician and songwriter.

Sam Myers was an accompanist on dozens of recordings by blues artists over five decades.

Sam Myers began his career as a drummer for Elmore James but was most famous as a blues vocalist and blues harp player.

Sam Myers acquired juvenile cataracts at age seven and was left legally blind for the rest of his life, despite corrective surgery.

Sam Myers could make out shapes and shadows, but could not read print at all; he was taught Braille.

Sam Myers acquired an interest in music while a schoolboy in Jackson, Mississippi, and became skilled enough at playing the trumpet and drums that he received a nondegree scholarship from the American Conservatory of Music in Chicago.

Sam Myers played drums with Elmore James on a fairly steady basis from 1952 until James's death, in 1963, and is credited on many of James's historic recordings for Chess Records.

In 1956, Sam Myers wrote and recorded what was to be his most famous single, "Sleeping in the Ground", a song that has been covered by Blind Faith, Eric Clapton, Robert Cray, and many other blues artists; it was featured on Bob Dylan's Theme Time Radio Hour show on "Sleep".

Sam Myers toured the world with Sylvia Embry and the Mississippi All-Stars Blues Band.

In 1986, Sam Myers met Anson Funderburgh, from Plano, Texas, and joined his band, The Rockets.

Sam Myers toured all over the US and the world with the Rockets, enjoying a partnership that endured until the time of his death, from complications due to surgery for throat cancer, on July 17,2006, in Dallas, Texas.

Just before Sam Myers died, he toured as a solo artist in Sweden, Norway and Denmark, with the Swedish band Bloosblasters.

In 2005, Sam Myers's album Coming from the Old School was nominated in the category Traditional Blues Album of the Year.

In January 2000, Sam Myers was inducted into the Farish Street Walk of Fame in Jackson, Mississippi, an honor he shares with Dorothy Moore and Sonny Boy Williamson II.

In 2006, just months before Sam Myers died, the Governor of Mississippi presented him with the Governor's Award for Excellence in the Arts, and he was named the state's Blues Ambassador by the Mississippi Arts Commission.