Sammie Moore
Samuel Moore, better known as "Sammie" or "Preacherboy" to his friends, was a young sharecropper and blues musician living in Clarksdale, Mississippi in 1932. He was the oldest son of Jedidiah and Ruthie Moore and the cousin of Elijah "Smoke" Moore and Elias "Stack" Moore. He lived and worked on Sunflower Plantation with his parents and many siblings. His two cousins were war heroes turned criminals reputed to have worked for Al Capone in Chicago after returning to America from World War I. Sammie greatly admired them. Smoke and Stack had gifted him a silver inlaid guitar which Stack claimed he and his brother had won off of blues musician Charley Patton in a card game (in reality the guitar had belonged to Sammie's uncle, the twins' abusive father). Disliking the way his father, a preacher, disapproved of him playing the blues, Sammie sought to escape from Clarksdale and saw his association with the newly returned Smokestack Twins as his ticket.
As luck would have it, using money, beer and wine stolen from the mob in Chicago, the Twins planned to open a blacks-only club using an old rundown sawmill they'd purchased from a man named Hogwood. They called it Club Juke, and along with renowned piano player Delta Slim, they hired Sammie to come and play at the club's opening night. While assisting Stack in hiring Slim, Preacherboy began to flirt with a married woman named Pearline, who didn't seem to mind the young man's attention. The two began a brief affair. At the opening night of Club Juke, Sammie, at Slim's insistence, played a song he wrote for his father called "I Lied to You," which was about how he loved Jedidiah but couldn't tell him the truth, that he loved the blues more than what Smoke called "church music."
Unbeknownst to Sammie, however, he was a griot, a West African shaman gifted with the power of singing and playing music "so true" it could pierce the veil between life and death, past and future, allowing spirits from all times to mingle with the partygoers. Although they could sense them through the power of Sammie's music, none of them could see them, or the awesome sight of the music being so powerful it metaphorically burned the club down. However, the three vampires Remmick, Bert and Joan, being creatures of the night, could see both the ethereal fire as well as the spirits. Realizing what he and his companions were witnessing, Remmick, seeking to reconnect with his Irish ancestors, began a lengthy battle of wits against those in the club to try and get inside so he could bite and turn Sammie and have him use his musical gifts as a griot for him and his fellow vampires.
As the night wore on, Stack, his former lover Mary, bouncer "Cornbread" and others were bitten by the vampires and turned into the undead, themselves, to add to Remmick's growing army. Sammie blamed himself, but was told by both Annie and Slim it wasn't his fault. His gifts as a griot could attract both good and evil, and it just happened that it attracted three vampires. After realizing Sammie was the group's primary target, Smoke and the others tried to think of a plan to combat the undead army. However, Grace, whose husband Bo had been taken, was fearful for her daughter Lisa, as Remmick had threatened her unless those in the club let him and his followers in or gave up Sammie, prompting Grace, wanting to kill Bo so he wouldn't go after his own daughter, to yell for the vampires to come inside, kicking off a final battle. Wielding a shotgun, Sammie shot several vampires before Slim sacrificed himself so he and the other survivors could escape out the back, only to find Remmick and Stack waiting for them.
While Stack fought his brother, still trying to convince him that becoming a vampire was "the way," Sammie was grabbed by Remmick, but saved by Pearline, at the cost of her humanity as Remmick bit her. With her last words, she urged Sammie to escape. Smoke told him to "Make it to sunrise!" Grabbing his guitar, Sammie fled, but was caught by Remmick. As the other vampires watched, Remmick prepared to bite his target and turn him, undaunted even when Sammie buried half the guitar in the master vampire's head, leaving him with just the neck. Smoke, having made a deal with his brother to let him and Mary go if they left Sammie alone, snuck up behind Remmick while he and the other vampires were distracted and staked him through the heart, killing him. The rising sun finished him off and also killed the other vampires.
Smoke told Sammie the truth about "Charley Patton's" guitar and advised him to bury it. During the siege, Remmick had revealed that Hogwood was not only a member of the Ku Klux Klan but its leader, the Grand Dragon, and that he was planning to return the next morning to kill everyone in the club. As Sammie drove to his father's church, leaving Smoke to lie in wait for the Klansmen, Sammie confronted Jedidiah who, rather than offering his son comfort, tried to use him as an example of what happened to sinners in front of the congregation. His gestures and movements also uncomfortably reminded the young man of Remmick. Resolving to strike out on his own at last, Sammie left Clarksdale that day and never returned.
By 1992 he was a famous blues musician with his own band and the owner of a club in Chicago called Pearline's, named after his one-night stand. He also had his uncle's guitar repaired and still played it on special occasions. One night, Stack and Mary appeared and convinced the bouncer to let them in, though they meant Sammie no harm, with Stack intending to honor his deal with Smoke. He offered to make Sammie into a vampire after noticing how old and close to death he was, but Sammie politely declined, saying he'd "seen enough of this place." As a farewell to Stack and Mary, he played the song "Travelin'" for them on his uncle's guitar. As the two left, he said he still had nightmares about that night, but that before the sun went down and the vampires turned up, it was the best day of his life. Stack couldn't help but agree.
