Sam Myers

For nearly two decades he was the featured vocalist for Anson Funderburgh & the Rockets.

• Name — Sam Myers • Birth Name — Samuel Joseph Myers • Born — 19 February 1936 • Birthplace — Laurel, Mississippi, United States • Died — 17 July 2006 • Place of death — Dallas, Texas, United States • Instrument — Vocalist, drums, blues harp • Genre — Blues • Occupation — Musician, songwriter • Website — www.sweetsammyers.com

Myers was born in Laurel, Mississippi, United States. He acquired juvenile cataracts at age seven and was left legally blind for the rest of his life, despite corrective surgery. He could make out shapes and shadows, but could not read print at all; he was taught Braille. He 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 (formerly the American Conservatory School of Music) in Chicago. Myers attended school by day and at night frequented the nightclubs of the South Side. 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 Blind Faith, Eric Clapton, Robert Cray, and many other blues artists; it was also featured on Bob Dylan's Theme Time Radio Hour show on "Sleep". From the early 1960s until 1986, Myers worked clubs in and around Jackson and across the South in the (formerly) racially segregated string of venues known as the Chitlin' Circuit. He also toured the world with Sylvia Embry and the Mississippi All-Stars Blues Band. In 1986, Myers met Anson Funderburgh, from Plano, Texas, and joined his band, The Rockets. 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 Myers died, he toured as a solo artist in Sweden, Norway and Denmark, with the Swedish band Bloosblasters.