Sam Myers, The Blues is my Story Read online

  Yeah, we was tough then when we got us a real ball.

  When I was about twelve, maybe thirteen, something happened as to

  why I smoke Camels today. My dad was working road construction,

  and we were staying in this big house that was up on pillars that

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  held the house up off the ground. He would have cigarettes in little traveling cases. What we would do, we’d steal his cigarettes and put them under that little crawl space under the house. If we caught him not looking or if he was gone, we would go outside and get those

  cigarettes that we had hidden. That’s where we would do our

  smoking, my brothers and me and my cousin. He used to come

  over and we all would hang together; he lived close, he was my mother’s sister’s son. We’d just be smoking and going on.

  My dad took out so many packages at one time, we looked at it

  like he had so many he wouldn’t miss the ones that we were getting.

  But what he did, he just decided not to pull out so many packages

  at once. He took maybe a couple of packs with him to work, and he

  left one or two lying around, just to see who was really smoking his cigarettes. So he came back and those cigarettes was open. He knew

  he didn’t open them, because he had the ones he was going to smoke

  with him. He said, “Well, one of these days I’m going to find out

  definitely who’s getting these cigarettes.” There was a soap powder that was made back then called Gold Dust. What he did was to leave just

  three or four cigarettes out. He took the tobacco out of them, unbe-

  knownst to us, and he put some of that Gold Dust in, and then he

  put the tobacco back in the end of it. And man, I was the first one to get one of ’em. And let me tell you, that was the worst thing that ever happened. I got dizzy, then I had a headache. I felt like somebody was walking around in my head with shoes with iron taps on the heel. I

  never tried that again! He said to me, “Well, now I’ve found out who’s been getting my cigarettes. What I’m going to do, when you turn the

  age of fourteen, if you’re going to continue to smoke, I’m going to buy you your first pack of cigarettes.” And that’s what he did.

  I was able to eventually buy my own because they were about

  twenty cents a pack. I wouldn’t buy nothing but Camels, and my

  brothers, they would always buy the loose ones, you could get two

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  for a nickel. But I was pretty much like a hustler, you know, I just was ready to buy me a pack. My dad said once, “Well, I see you’re still smoking. Give me a cigarette.” I said, “I’m going to give you a pack.”

  He said, “No, I don’t want a whole pack, just give me one cigarette.”

  I said, “No, I’m going to give you a whole pack. We’re wearing the

  same shoe now. You bought my first pack, and if I could afford it,

  don’t you think it’d be the right thing to do, to give you one?” He said,

  “I never heard you talk like that before.” I said, “Well, if you want just one cigarette, just take it, and then if you don’t want the pack, just say so. But there they’re laying, over there by my case.” He said, “Well, I do like that case.” I said, “I got two of them, you take that one and the pack of cigarettes.” So ever since then, whenever I’d run out he’d throw me a pack, and every time when he’d run out I’d throw him a pack.

  I wasn’t able to read and write like my brothers and sister. The

  type of education that I needed to learn, and things that I needed

  to know in life, they didn’t teach it in public school. I wasn’t able to see, because I had a juvenile cataract eye condition for quite a spell. I had an operation the same year I started to school, about age seven.

  They couldn’t do a whole lot, but they didn’t do what they could have done either. A Doctor Bell, he took the cataract off my eye, but he left parts of the roots still there. Later on, it grew back. When he took the cataract off the first time, I got back to where I could see pretty good.

  I could see better out of my left eye than I could my right, but I still had to wear glasses to support both eyes. I have a nerve condition,

  too, where my eyes dance a lot. Because of that, people have asked

  me, “Why not have surgery again?” I said, “Well, you know, I haven’t really thought about it,” but even now, I can see how to move about

  and go different places where people who have the same handicap

  don’t. Sometimes I can see what’s going on when people with perfect

  vision don’t know what’s happening. So I had my eyes operated on

  again when I was fourteen, in Memphis at the John Gaston Hospital.

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  It was the charity hospital back then. I tell a lot of people when I go to Memphis, “This is where my eyes were operated on, the first time I’d ever been to Memphis.” It wasn’t no big deal, it was just one of those things. Coming up from a poor background, I never let that stand

  out in front of me like a lot of people, accepting self-pity and stuff like that. I’ve never been that kind of way. From a child coming up, I learned one thing: if you want a strong something to happen to you in life, you gotta be strong.

  I managed to survive a lot of times in places and in situations

  where it wouldn’t help if people had their perfect vision. I’ve learned to survive better than a lot of them, and it don’t look to me as if I’m as misfortunate as they are. I feel I am blessed and just as fortunate as a lot of people even when having a handicap. I look at it like self-pity is something that I don’t need, and it’s something that I don’t stick out in front of me. I look at it like, hey, we’re all human beings here, so what is fair for the next person is just as fair for me too. A lot of people look at it a little different, but it’s a true thing.

  O l l i e :

  Sam’s mama, Celeste, loved to go fishing, but she never would carry Sam to fish because he couldn’t see to get along in the woods. Celeste and me would go hunting with Corrine Tatum, that’s another one of her lady friends, and Ashton Jones and his wife. We’d have those blue jeans that were fleece-lined, rubber boots, and Celeste had her flashlight and a little old dog. Old Spot was his name. He didn’t bark when he was running a coon, so she had to hang a bell on his neck. She’d hear that bell rattling when he was running. When he got a coon up a tree, then he’d bark.

  They used to go fishing on Friday nights, just like people be going out on weekends nowadays. They’d take their pans and grease and coffee-pot and they’d cook the fish right on the creek bank.

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  O l l i e :

  I had fourteen head of hound dog that I used to go hunting with. I had a

  .22 rifle I shot coon with, and I had an old double-barreled shotgun that I deer-hunted with. It had two hammers on it. I had buckshot in one barrel and a slug in the other. And all those dogs, I didn’t buy no dog food.

  Celeste would cook potatoes and bread, cook up a bunch of stuff like that for those dogs. Some of ’em I had tied up, some of ’em I didn’t. I had a trough out where I’d feed ’em. Now that was her special dog, that little old Spot. We’d go coon hunting and those hound dogs couldn’t find nothing.

  But you could hear that bell rattling, “Ting-a-ling, ting-a-ling!” And you know he done struck a track then. Them other dogs, when they’d hear that bell rattling like that, they’d take off, too. And he didn’t bark until he treed up what he was running.

  He was a smart dog, too. We had another dog; he was one of them

  redbone hounds. Dan was his name. We had another one named

  Flora. That one hung herself.

  O l l i e :

  She was in heat,
you know. I had her shut up in a crib so the dogs couldn’t get to her, and I didn’t have the door fastened up enough. She crawled out, and the chain, when she fell out, she just hung up there. I got up the next morning and there she was, hanging out, done choked herself to death.

  When we was fishing, we’d take a big can and get some water. To

  catch them catfish, we’d set out hooks, find us a good long place and set out fifteen, twenty big, long hooks. Get us some grub worms out of an old rotten log, put ’em on them hooks. We’d fish in the daytime when the creeks would be up, catch us some fish, cook ’em, and when night come, we’d make some coffee. We’d be sitting out there cleaning them fish. We’d have a meal and we’d be down there all night long cooking fish, catching them yellow cats. Cook ’em as we catch ’em.

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  Me and another boy that was raised up with Sam, White was his

  name, me and him and Ashton Jones, one night we caught a hundred yellow cat. A hundred of them, and there was some big fresh-water eels.

  They a fresh-water fish, wasn’t no salt-water fish. And we caught a blue cat with a forked tail. We caught a hundred of them yellow cats, I never will forget it. And seven of them eels, big old blue eels, ’bout that long. I know it was seven eels. I don’t think but one of them was a blue cat. We had a whole load of fish coming out of there that Sunday morning.

  Sam never did go fishing or hunting with us. He couldn’t see how to get around much in the woods at night. But he’d sure enough go to them clubs. We called ’em shops, they was in the country. We called ’em road-houses in the city. Back then, you could play a record for a nickel. They’d stay up all night long, playin’ and a-dancin’, whoopin’ and hollerin’, singin’ and showin’ out.

  A u t h o r :

  What has it meant for you to have Sam turn out to be such a famous and respected blues musician?

  O l l i e :

  I’m glad he’s had fun. I’m sure enough wonderful proud that he’s got people, his friends, seeing out after him like they do. There are things he’s done for himself that I wouldn’t have been able to do for him.

  W i l l i e E a r l ( S a m ’s s o n ) :

  I’m proud that he’s got as far as he has with whatever he’s been trying to do with his life in music. I know he’s got to like it, because he’s been doing it all these years, and he’s seen his ups and downs in it. I’m just glad that he’s made it far as he has, to really see some success out of it. And I’m glad I have his inspiration, having the background of somebody in my life like him, to say that I have some influence in music and a father like him

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  who has kept going through the things that he’s had with his life. He kept on. I hope he has great success in whatever he does from here on out. I’m glad he ran into some people that really help him, that keep him going in the right direction. He done seen a lot of hard times in music, and the time when he got started, he probably wasn’t getting anything out of it back then. I’m just happy that it’s paying off for him now. I wish him more of the best of luck. I’m very proud of him.

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  C H A P T E R 2

  COTTON FIELDS, RAILROADS,

  AND SAWMILLS

  While conditions in pre–World War II Jones County, Mississippi, were marginally better for much of the rural black population than in other places in the region, life for many of Sam’s contemporaries was neverthe-less filled with long, hard work. Compared to the number of workers in the more agricultural areas of the state, fewer people toiled in the fields surrounding Sam’s hometown of Laurel. But the tradeoff for the somewhat better pay and working conditions in the mills and on the railroads was frequently injury and sometimes death.

  It wasn’t always fun then, but after I grew up I thought about it many times, being on the farm and seeing how people pick cotton. I even

  picked a few bolls myself. One thing that was real interesting was

  when I was a water boy during cotton-picking season. I had this big

  water carrier filled with cold water. People wouldn’t eat much during the hot weather. The sun would be beating down, and a lot of them

  would have umbrellas to keep their heads shaded. I would be walking

  along and they would holler, “Water boy!” I had some cups on a big

  rod, so if someone wanted some water, I would take this cup and pour

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  the water for them. Some of them would have their own special

  drinking cup, and I wouldn’t have to give them a cup every time.

  I would just fill theirs up. Some would say, “I want a rock in the

  bucket.” That meant a hard piece of ice.

  On the second day I was doing this, I wasn’t feeling good. With

  me getting tired, I could imagine how tired they would be. But that

  was their only means of work at that time, to make what little money they could picking cotton. The only thing they were interested in was getting their sacks filled. They would run eleven-foot cotton sacks, to ones even longer, maybe sixteen-foot, and they would fill those sacks up. The first thing I thought of when I saw them was they was just

  making horses out of themselves. Things can come to mind like that.

  I said, “No, I don’t think I want to do this,” so I went and carried the water. What would happen, by the time you thought you got it made,

  finished with all that water, someone was always hollerin’ way across the field, “Water boy! Water boy!” It was a big bucket with a dipper in it, and if I were to empty it I would have to walk way back up to the shed where they weighed the cotton and fill it up again and do the

  same thing over.

  They would start picking cotton at sunup because it would be

  cooler. They could get more in that way, and by the time the sun rose up to about twelve o’clock high, they would have picked a long ways

  in the field. So I got going when they started in the morning, I’d say about eight o’clock, and by twelve o’clock, I was worn out. They would take a break for lunch, and then a lot of them would be interested in getting back to the fields, trying to pick enough cotton to earn enough money to make it. A lot of families would, I’d estimate, pick maybe

  three hundred pounds apiece. There would be men, women, even

  little kids, maybe ten or twelve years old, who were out of school. They could pick only so much, so they’d have a littler sack, picking along-side their parents. They would take their little amount and pour it into

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  a bigger sack. And they also got paid for what they did. But a lot of times, the sun would be so hot they wouldn’t let the kids come out.

  The first picking would be right about August, and sometimes

  they’d pick cotton way into October, but normally it’d be real heavy in the months of August and September. After October, it’d be what

  they call scrapping cotton. I used to stand and watch them and I’d say,

  “These people must sure be tired doing this.” But even back then music was in my head. I remember one day I went and made a couple of

  rounds on the water wagon. I went like I was going to get some more

  water to bring back to the field. I set that bucket and cup rack down, and that’s when I left and went to Chicago. That was the last time I was in the fields. I used to go back home on school break and see them working like that in those fields, and I thought that was really a terrible way to make a living.

  When I was thirteen or fourteen, I would go to Chicago during the

  summer. That would be during the time before cotton-picking sea-

  son would start, and I would come back a couple of weeks before

  school, right in the middle of p
icking season. To me that was a really brutal way to make it. The farmers back then, after they picked so much cotton, it was just like the plantation owners in the Delta. We didn’t live in the Delta, but those rows in the fields, they seemed to be just as long as the rows in a Mississippi Delta field. And it was just so hot back then.

  When they would take the cotton to the gin, I used to go down there a lot of times, just to see those big pipes and things. Some of them would have a wagon, some of them had tractors pulling the wagon, and some

  of them would have trailer trucks that was hauling. At the gin they’d drop that pipe on the wagon, where the cotton was loosely set, and it would suction it right up into the gin. They’d have the seeds going one way and the cotton going another. The cotton would go into this big

  thing called a hopper and they’d weigh it. They’d weigh it twice, and when it got up to fourteen hundred pounds it would be one bale. Then

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  they’d put a metal band around it to lock it all together, and then they would jam it over. They would write the person’s name on it, whose

  farm it was. They’d get all this cotton weighed and when they’d settle up with you, the guy would always say, “Well, you made about fourteen bales, you know, about fourteen bales of cotton was your part.” But

  actually you made more than that. They’d say, “You like to came out.”

  That meant you almost picked as much as you were supposed to have

  picked, to pay back all the money that you had borrowed from the farm store.

  That was their slogan, “You just about made it, but try harder next

  year.” They’d be cheating you all the time; if you picked sixteen or eighteen bales, they’d say you made fourteen. There wouldn’t be no

  complainin’, though. They’d send these samples back to the farmer

  who owned the farm. The farmer would say, “Well, you know, you like

  to came out. For Christmas, you’re going to need some extra money.”