Sam Myers, The Blues is my Story

by Jeff Horton

  She said she wasn’t interested in getting married right then, no way.

  My mother took care of Willie Earl ever since he was six weeks

  old; he’s about forty-five now. Actually, he knows my mother was his grandmother. His mother, Willie Mae, died when he was about ten

  or eleven. We never were married, but my son always bore my name.

  We met in Jackson, Mississippi, and that’s where Willie Earl was born.

  I was with Elmore back then, running back and forth to Chicago.

  We were playing a lot of clubs around Jackson and throughout

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  Mississippi, and we had our sideline business, the moonshine stuff.

  Willie Earl was born at the university hospital in Jackson, which is the University Medical Center now. About six weeks after he was born,

  his mother and I had broke up right before I went out to Texas to do the weekend with a friend of mine, a tenor sax player named Duke

  Huddleston. I guess he still lives in Dallas; I haven’t heard from him in quite a while. I used to come out with him and do gigs. We’d do stuff for the government, a lot of political people. Duke is originally from Jackson, but he’s been living out here in Dallas for a long time. He was the first black man to have a TV show in Mississippi. I was working with his group part-time then, too, for a lot of government par-

  ties and at the white clubs. That’s where the money was really being made by a musician at that time. We played clubs in Jackson like the Wagon Wheel. It was at 104 East Capitol Street, upstairs over a cloth-ing store called R. C. Brown’s. We also played at another club on Pearl Street called the Sable Room, not far from the old Jackson Municipal Auditorium.

  Because Willie Mae and I had broke up, I was renting from a lady

  on 127 West Davis Street there in Jackson. While I was in Dallas, I

  found out Willie Mae was going to give the boy away. Not put him up

  for adoption, but just give him away. She had had a lot of kids, but she didn’t like having any of them around like most people because they

  cramped her style.

  I had called my landlady, Miss Beale, and she said, “You know, if

  you could get somebody to stand in for you, what you need to do is

  get home as fast as you can because Willie Mae is fixing to give that boy away.” I called my mother and asked her how soon could she get

  to Jackson. After I told her what was going on, she said, “I could leave Mobile now and be there in about four hours.” I said, “If I took a flight out it would take me four hours.” Back then they didn’t have a jet service going to Jackson. I said, “We going to have to work this out. By

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  the time you get to the house, I’ll be there at the same time.” So she left Mobile going to Jackson. I told Duke, “I’m going to try to make it back in time for the gig tonight.” He said, “Well, you don’t have to be there until nine o’clock. But if it’s an emergency thing, we could work around you. You’ll still get paid.”

  So I came on home, and when I got there my mama was already

  there. Willie Mae wanted to know why was I back so early. I told her that I had found out what she was doing. I still had something like a wardrobe trunk there at her place, so I packed the rest of my clothes and stuff and she said, “What you doing?” I said, “I’m moving out of here for good.” I put my stuff in that big trunk and left her standing in the doorway crying her eyeballs out. Matter of fact, I took the next evening flight back to Dallas, and I made it to the gig in time. So that was the end of her and me. My mama took Willie Earl back to Mobile

  with her. So, heck, I didn’t care. After I finished my gig with Duke, I came back to Jackson. I already had me another place to live, so that was about it.

  Willie Mae was an all right person, but also she was kind of on the

  rough side. Course, I wasn’t no angel then myself, I might say. But it was one of those deals where we really weren’t meant to be together.

  That’s what it all boiled down to. Willie Earl would ask me from time to time, “Where’s Mother?” I said, “Well, she’s not around, son.” He wanted to know what she looked like. So one day I finally told him,

  “We’re going to get some pictures together and show you.” My mother

  had some snapshots of Willie Mae and showed them to him, and he

  told her, “No, that’s not my mama, you my mama.” So we just left it at that.

  I finally told him on his thirtieth birthday that she had got killed in New York around 1970. It didn’t bother him much, because he really didn’t know her. Another woman had got into it with her, and just

  beat her doing what she thought she was going to do. Cut her throat,

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  yeah. Being in a place like New York during that time period, it was a rough town. She liked to hang around in the saloons and run with

  a rough crowd. The only job that she had was working in clubs that

  she really liked. She was a good worker, knew a lot of work to do, and she could always get a job. The nightclub scene, working in bars and restaurants, that was her type of job. She was a professional shoplifter as well. I never was in touch with her after we broke up. I happened to hear about her passing through one of her daughters, Dora Lee. She

  told me what had happened and I said, “Well, when you live a fast life, that’s the way it usually comes out.” I looked at her like that was not the kind of life for me, as a man of my ability. But some of the best clothes I ever wore in my life, she sewed the material and made them for me. She was a good seamstress. Even with the way that she lived

  and stuff, she didn’t believe in going hungry and didn’t want nobody around her to be hungry. I think well of her for that.

  Naturally I got on with my life, being a musician and all. Just like I said, it’s a way of life. Just one of those things. Years later, after he became a man, Willie Earl got into trouble, but other than that, things have been a pretty sweet life for me. I never have been into no real, real heavy problem things myself, so to speak, so what happened to Willie Earl really went down into deep stuff.

  Willie Earl’s been to jail twice. The first time was when he killed

  a guy. He had been working with some guys doing some kind of elec-

  trical work. Willie Earl and one of the guys didn’t get along noway.

  They was up at the office, and when the man paid them off, the guy

  told Willie Earl that he owed him some money. Willie Earl cashed

  his check and gave the guy his money. He had to rush to the house

  because he and Mama and Dad were leaving to go up to Mississippi

  that weekend. This guy followed him home, and they had some words

  about some electrical wire cutters that belonged to my son and this

  guy wanted them. He came up in the yard and called him out. When

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  Willie Earl went out, the guy picked up a shovel, and he broke the

  handle of it across Willie Earl’s head. He was swinging at him again, so Willie Earl took a knife and just plugged him right in the heart.

  All of his buddies, they run off and left him. They called the cops, and they put Willie Earl in jail. They had witnesses that saw that this was a self-defense thing, so the cops were just going to hold him for a little while in jail until after the funeral, then turn him out. I was working at the Industries for the Blind there in Jackson, and Mama

  called me and told me what had happened. I told her, “Whatever you

  do, don’t worry about getting a lawyer.” She said, “Well, that’s my

  baby . . . ,” you know, this, that, and the other. I said, “Well, I don’t care.
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  I’ve got to tell you this, whatever gonna happen to him gonna happen to him whether you got any money or not. But it don’t make no sense

  for you to spend every dime that you got and when you get broke

  you find out that he was going to be set free anyway, and the lawyer’s done got all your money.” So they told her at the jail, “We know this is a self-defense thing, but we’re not going to turn him out right now simply because we got to see what his family thinks about it.” Come to find out, that boy’s family didn’t care nothing about him noway. But you know law enforcement works a funny way. Naturally, when they

  let him out, being in Mobile, Alabama, in the South, once you had

  a record with the police department, whether it was in a good self-

  defense or not, you still was a marked person.

  A few years later, he had gotten married, and the cops set him up.

  This woman told him that she was trying to get to her car that had

  quit on her. He was working at the Oldsmobile dealership there in

  Mobile, and he had bought him a pickup truck. He was hanging out at

  this place, and this cop came up, and of all the people that had automobiles there, he was picked to be the fall guy. The cop told him to take her to get her car and see if he could get it fixed for her. He said,

  “Well, I know a little about mechanics,” and he went on around. She

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  dropped a bag of reefer and a bunch of pills on the floorboard of his truck, and when he got out, she had this little scanner, and the other cops pulled up on him and arrested him and took him to jail. He

  spent two years up north of Mobile at one of those prison farms.

  Then Mama really got wired up. She wanted to go and do every-

  thing she could to get him out. I said, “Mama, you’ve got that boy out of practically everything that he got into, but you know lawyers and people like that will drain you for everything you got. He’s gotta hit it so he’ll know what it is about life. Let this be a learning lesson for him.” No, she didn’t want to do that. So me and my brothers and sister, we all told her if she messed around and got broke doing what she could for that boy when it didn’t make any sense to do it, we would

  never come again, we’d forget about the family. She started thinking about that, and she didn’t do nothing. But she would carry him cigarettes and money and stuff up there on visiting days. But she didn’t cut that money loose to try to get him out. He was supposed to do two years, but he got off a year early for good behavior. I said, “Well, that was all the time he was gonna get in the first place. You would have spent every dime that you had, and then when the lawyer find out that you didn’t have no more money, he was gonna tell you, ‘Well, I did all that I could do.’ He can’t get but two years, he was gonna do that time anyway.” Willie Earl’s wife was messin’ around. She didn’t go to see him any time when he was in jail. First time he ever said anything to me that I thought made sense, he asked me what I would do in a case

  like that. I said, “Look, you a man, and it’s right there in front of you and you don’t even see it. I’d forget about her.” And so he did, and ever since then, he’s been doing all right for himself.

  I never did be involved with my other two kids that much because

  of a whole lot of things that me and their mothers couldn’t see eye-

  to-eye on. So that kind of put a damper on that. I wound up doing

  a whole lot of different stuff. I just never have been the type person

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  to let things worry me. It just really means a lot to me, to see people doing good. I never liked to hear about anything bad happening to

  nobody. So, it’s just what you go through and deal with in life, I imagine.

  I never have been the type of person who wanted to live above

  my means. I’ve been a person that’s always tried to be a provider for myself. I always wound up trying to deal with getting what I needed

  to have or the best that I could get, without being wrong about it. It would have to be done in a professional way before it would be right.

  I was always interested in nothing but what was meant for me. What I mean by being interested in, I don’t want anything that doesn’t rightfully belong to me. I just wanted to become a good-living person,

  and over the years, that has been a thing that I eventually wound up achieving.

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  C H A P T E R 6

  ELMORE JAMES

  Sam’s long association with Elmore James was perhaps the most important collaboration of his career. As a youngster of sixteen he met the newly famous Elmore in Chicago a few months after the 1951 release of Elmore’s biggest hit, “Dust My Broom.” It was recorded at Lillian McMurry’s Trumpet Records in Jackson, a studio that in a few years would figure significantly in the life of the young Sam Myers.

  Sam was invited to join Elmore’s peripatetic group as one of a

  revolving cast of studio and road drummers on the “Chittlin’ Circuit.”

  This was the name given to the loose route that black R&B and blues bands traveled in the 1950s and 1960s, mostly through the Deep South and as far north as Pittsburgh and Detroit. It involved moving from gig to gig in automobiles stuffed with instruments and luggage, and it was a hardscrabble existence for musicians who relied on word of mouth to persuade the next club or theater owner to book them for a night or two.

  Many owners would even pit one band against another in competitions to see who the crowd wanted to have back again.

  Sam appeared on record with Elmore on such songs as “The Sky Is

  Crying” (Fire Records, 1959), “Stormy Monday” and “Madison Blues”

  (Chess Records, 1960), “Rollin’ and Tumblin’” (Fire, 1960) and a later version of “Dust My Broom” (Enjoy Records, 1963). Their association

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  lasted until 1963, when Elmore passed away from a heart attack at the age of forty-five.

  Starting off in 1952, Elmore was paying me thirty-five dollars a night, playing drums. During the whole time we worked together, I didn’t

  blow much harp, which is what a lot of people look for me to do now, every time when they see me. I didn’t blow harmonica on but two of

  his recordings. One was a big classic by him, “Look on Yonder Wall.”

  That was on Fire and Fury, Bobby Robinson’s label out of New York.

  We did that one in New Orleans. I played with him from ’52 until ’63, the time when he died.

  “Dust My Broom” was actually a Robert Johnson song, but

  Elmore had made it into his own by the way he played it, all electrified. It was a big record for him. Big Bill Hill and his brother had a cleaners and a booking agency, Colt’s Booking Agency, on Madison

  Street. Big Bill was a disc jockey and used to do his show from there at the cleaners, through radio station WOPA. A lot of the bluesmen who

  he booked would have shows on that station. From there he would be

  playing their records from time to time, being also a booking agent

  and a promoter and a DJ. They called that “breaking their records,”

  playing their records when they just came out. That’s how a lot of

  them got started.

  After a couple more years I had begun to get fed up with Chicago.

  To me, Chicago was a good opportunity; there was some nice clubs

  there. But one thing I never did like, whenever you had your own

  money to spend, you had to hide it away so nobody would know you

  had any. If you spent any money, they would know you had some,

  and they would try to get it away from you. It was like there might be somebody watching, and there might not be, but that’s the way life had beg
un to get there. People was always watching you. If you was somewhere by yourself, they’d jackpot you and take everything you had.

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  That’s what the city was known for. It was a harsh life to live. So by 1956

  I had got out of Chicago, and I was more or less permanently living in Jackson when I wasn’t touring or recording with Elmore.

  About 1957, at Vee-Jay Records, Elmore and I did “It Hurts Me

  Too,” “You Know I’m Coming Home,” and “The Twelve-Year-Old

  Boy.” The guy that played guitar with Bobby Bland for a long time, the late Wayne Bennett, he was on those sessions. After we went on tour, Big Joe Turner did a couple of songs called “Oke-She-Moke-She-Pop”

  and “T.V. Mama.” It was a Big Joe record for Atlantic Records, but

  me and Elmore were on the session. In 1959, I was on the session for

  “The Sky Is Crying,” on Fire. Now, there’s one thing about Elmore

  and his recording sessions. He could come out of the studio, and if a guy wanted to record him right across the street or around the corner from where he just came out of the studio, he’d go in and record. A

  lot of guys would tell him, “Man, you got a big record out there, you’re doing good, I’d like to do something with you. But you’ve already got a contract, you’re lined up with this guy.” Elmore would say, “When

  can you get the studio? Do you have a studio already? I can go in

  whenever you get ready. I just have to get my band together and we

  can go in and record.”

  That’s the kind of guy he was. What royalties that he did have, it

  was hard for him to get because he had a lot of records on so many

  different labels.

  After that, he did some more work over at Chess. “Madison Blues,”

  “Can’t Hold Out,” and “Whose Muddy Shoes.” I was on those. There

  were these guys in California, Joe Bihari and his brother Jules, who had Modern Records out of Los Angeles. Elmore did “Sunnyland” for

  them. I wasn’t on that, but I played it on his shows. What I would do was to listen to the record, and I kept the beat in my head. That’s how I would play them on the different shows. A lot of people have asked me, was I on that session? I tell ’em no, but it would have been the