Louis Myers

Louis Myers (18 September 1929 – 5 September 1994; Byhalia, Mississippi, United States) was an American blues guitarist, harmonica player and vocalist, best remembered as a founding member of the pioneering electric Chicago blues band the Aces.

Alongside his older brother, guitarist and later bassist Dave Myers, and drummer Fred Below, Myers helped shape the sound of postwar Chicago blues, serving both as a celebrated bandleader in his own right and as one of the city's most sought-after sidemen.
 

Early Life

Myers was born in the countryside near Byhalia, Mississippi, into a musical family; he and his brothers first learned the rudiments of guitar from their father. In 1941 the family relocated to Chicago, where they settled next door to established blues guitarist Lonnie Johnson, whose intricate playing style made a lasting impression on the young Louis.

His older brother Bob, a harmonica player, introduced him to guitarist Othum Brown, and Myers began performing at house-party gigs while still a teenager, absorbing the big-band swing and pop ballads of the era alongside the blues of Chicago's South Side. He went on to play alongside guitarist Arthur "Big Boy" Spires before teaming up with his brother Dave and a young harmonica player, Junior Wells, forming a trio originally billed as the Little Boys and then the Three Deuces.

Career

With the addition of drummer Fred Below in 1950, the group, by then also known as the Three Aces and the Four Aces, settled on the name the Aces, developing a jazz-influenced, urbane approach to the blues that was well ahead of its time; Below's refined shuffle rhythms in particular are credited with establishing the drums as a central voice within the blues ensemble.

When Junior Wells departed in 1952 to join Muddy Waters's band, harmonica player Little Walter, who had just left Waters on the strength of his hit single "Juke", recruited the remaining Aces as his own backing group, renaming them the Jukes. In this configuration, the band recorded a run of influential sides behind Little Walter, including "Mean Old World", "Sad Hours", "Off the Wall" and "Tell Me Mama", before Myers left the group around 1954.

With the Jukes gradually dissolving as Little Walter's band, the Myers brothers and Below went on to work as a backing unit for other prominent Chicago blues artists, among them Otis Rush, Eddie Boyd, Jimmy Reed, Roosevelt Sykes, Billy Boy Arnold, Louis Jordan, Jimmy Rogers, Robert Lockwood Jr. and Eddie Taylor. Myers, celebrated chiefly for his guitar work but also an accomplished harmonica player, released a solo instrumental single on the Abco label in Chicago in 1956.

The reunited Aces recorded albums under their own name for French labels, including Kings of the Chicago Blues, Vol. 1 (Vogue, 1973) and The Aces with Their Guests (MCM, 1976), and periodically toured and reunited for recordings and festival appearances, including visits to Europe, through the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s.

As a bandleader, Myers recorded the solo album I'm a Southern Man for the Advent label in 1978. In 1991 he recorded what would be his final album, Tell My Story Movin', for the Earwig label; during the sessions he suffered a stroke, and though he completed the recording, he was limited thereafter to playing harmonica rather than guitar.
 

Personal Life

Myers's health declined in the years following his stroke, and he died on 5 September 1994 in Chicago, Illinois, shortly before what would have been his sixty-fifth birthday. Within the Chicago blues community, Myers and his fellow Aces were noted for feeling that their pioneering contribution to the genre had gone under-recognised during their lifetimes.

That contribution is now widely acknowledged: the Aces are credited with helping to originate the sound of electric Chicago blues and, through Dave Myers's adoption of the electric bass in the late 1950s, with helping to popularise that instrument within the genre.

In 2018, more than two decades after Myers's death, the Aces were inducted into the Blues Hall of Fame by the Blues Foundation, joining Below, who died in 1988, and Dave Myers, who died in 2001.