Bill Myrick

(1) West Carroll Parish
Louisiana

Bellinda Myrick
Martin C. Myrick

Billie E. Myrick, known as Bill Myrick (August 6, 1926 – March 12, 2011), was an American Country musician, originally from Simpson County in south central Mississippi but a long-time resident of Odessa in West Texas.

He was one of ten children of James Martin "Jim" Myrick and his wife, the former Allie Artimissa Parker, tenant farmers who moved their family to West Carroll Parish in northeastern Louisiana, where they purchased their own farm shortly before the Great Depression. He is the brother of Louisiana State Senator W. Spencer Myrick (1918–1991).

Spencer and Bill Myrick both at times worked for Governor Earl Kemp Long. Bill Myrick joined the United States Army directly out of high school at the start of World War II, and as a combat medic in the Pacific with tours of duty in Japan and the Philippines.

Myrick returned to Louisiana after the war. His first professional singing job came by chance. He sat waiting to begin a temporary job putting up a tent at a circus, and was spotted picking his guitar and singing. He was immediately hired to fill a vacancy that had just occurred in the band of Bluegrass musician Bill Monroe and the Bluegrass Boys. After a few years of performing at the Grand Ole Opry and on the road in concert with Monroe, Myrick put together the first professional bluegrass group Myrick and the Mayfield Brothers with the ranching Mayfield brothers, Edd, Herb, and Smokey, from the Texas Panhandle area of Dimmitt in Castro County. Myrick and the Mayfield Brothers performed on the Louisiana Hayride in Shreveport, Louisiana and became regulars on the show. Edd Mayfield was also invited to perform with Bill Monroe and the Bluegrass Boys, precursors to the stylish, rancher look with starched and pressed blue jeans, crisp white shirts, cowboy hats, and cowboy boots, a look common in country music today but innovative in the 1950s.