Important personalitiesBack

Samuel Josepe Myers was born in Laurel, Mississippi. 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 non-degree scholarship from the American Conservatory of Music (formerly named the American Conservatory School of Music) in Chicago. Myers attended school by day and at night frequented the nightclubs of the South Side, Chicago. There he met and was sitting in with Jimmy Rogers, Muddy Waters, Howling Wolf, Little Walter, Hound Dog Taylor, Robert Lockwood, Jr., and Elmore James. 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, Myers wrote and recorded what was to be his most famous single, "Sleeping In The Ground", a song that has been covered by Eric Clapton, Robert Cray, and many other blues artists, as well as being featured on Bob Dylan's Theme Time Radio Hour show on 'Sleep'.

From the early 1960s until 1986, Myers worked the clubs in and around Jackson, as well as across the South in the (formerly) racially segregated string of venues dubbed the Chitlin' Circuit. He also toured the world with Sylvia Embry and the Mississippi All-Stars Blues Band.[citation needed]

In 1986, Myers met Anson Funderburgh, from Plano, Texas, and joined his band, The Rockets. Myers toured all over the U.S. and the world with The Rockets, enjoying a partnership that endured until the time of his death, from complications from throat cancer surgery on July 17, 2006, in Dallas, Texas.

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

That same year, the University Press of Mississippi published Myers' autobiography titled Sam Myers: The Blues is My Story. Writer Jeff Horton, whose work has appeared in Blues Revue and Southwest Blues, chronicled Myers' history and delved into his memories of life on the road.

Myers and The Rockets collectively won nine W. C. Handy Awards, including three "Band of the Year" awards and the 2004 award for Best Traditional Album of the Year. In 2005, Myers' record, Coming From The Old School was nominated for Traditional Blues Album of the Year for his.

In January 2000, 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 Myers died, the Governor of Mississippi presented Myers with the Governor's Award for Excellence in the Arts, and was named state Blues Ambassador by the Mississippi Arts Commission.