Rare military drivers license to one of the African American truck drivers famed for running the "Red Ball Express" trucks to maintain logistics to the advancing US Army in France in 1944. The license is made out to PFC Frederick Sams. What makes this lot very special is Sams’ personal photos, which are a tour de force of the famous Jazz and Blues clubs of Chicago’s South Side during World War 2.

PFC Frederick "Freddie" Sams’ was a truck driver in the Army during WW2. He was born February 13, 1924 and died in 1965. In 1943, Sams enlisted or was drafted and was sent to driver school at the Fourth E.A.U.T.C. (Engineer Aviation Unit Training Command) at March Field, California in July 1943. PFC Sams was qualified to drive both the 1 ½ ton Dodge cargo trucks and the 2 ½ ton GMC cargo trucks used by the Red Ball Express in Europe after D-Day, despite the fact that his trigger finger on his right hand was amputated at the first knuckle. This is recorded on his Selective Service card and is visible in one of the photographs of him in the grouping.

Sams’ married Margaret White on New Year’s Day 1944. Their photographs from the time of their engagement in November 1943 to their wedding reception in the Pershing Hotel in Chicago on New Year’s Day are a grand tour of the great Jazz and Blues clubs of the Chicago Southside and Bronzeville neighborhoods of the Golden Era of Jazz. The stylish couple are seen at all of the most important and most popular dance and music halls of the day, including the DeLisa, the Rhumboogie and Joe’s Deluxe Club, where so many of the great postwar Jazz musicians got their start. The photo grouping includes rare and collectable photos from all these clubs during their wartime heyday in the mid-1940’s. In several photographs, Sams’ is seen in his Army uniform, and other African American servicemen are seen wearing their uniforms in the clubs. After the war, census records show that Sams’ worked as a taxi driver.

Very rare photographic material and a rare Redball Express drivers license.