Died On This Date (October 12, 1998) Raymond Myles / New Orleans Gospel Legend
themusicsover Raymond Myles
July 14, 1958 – October 12, 1998
Raymond Myles was acknowledged by his New Orleans’ musical peers as perhaps the greatest gospel talent of his generation. The testimonials to his greatness as a singer, pianist and choir director came from no less than Harry Connick, Jr., Aaron Neville, Dr. John and Allen Toussaint. Myles devoted his life to addressing vital social issues that impacted his community and affected him personally. From his impoverished beginnings in the everyday violence of New Orleans’ housing projects, he became a dedicated public school music teacher whose commitment to young people steered many of them away from ruin during a murderous crack epidemic in New Orleans during the nineties. “But as hard as he tried, Raymond never felt that his community embraced him with what he considered to be God’s unconditional love,” said Leo Sacks, who produced his only full-length studio album, A Taste of Heaven, and is directing a documentary called A Taste Of Heaven: The Heartbreak Life of Raymond Myles, Gospel Genius of New Orleans, now in production (raymondmylesmovie.com). “These feelings of isolation and disconnection reflected a lifetime of struggle with his elders in the black church, a struggle that boiled down to their refusal to fully accept gay worshipers.” In his short, turbulent life, Myles performed as such prestigious music events as the New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival, the Telluride Bluegrass Festival and the Newport Folk Festival. Tragically, his dramatic journey from a childhood of abject poverty to the brink of international music stardom was cut short when he was murdered during a carjacking outside the French Quarter on the night of October 11, 1998. A career criminal from New Orleans was sentenced to 20 years in Louisiana’s Angola state penitentiary for being an accomplice to the killing. So beloved was Raymond Myles that when he was laid to rest, only Mahalia Jackson and Louis Armstrong drew more mourners to their Crescent City funerals.
Snooks Eaglin was a popular New Orleans R&B performer who, due to a set list that drew from upwards of 2500 songs, was sometimes called “the human jukebox.” And to the dismay of his backing band, in most cases he performed without a written set list, preferring to just play what felt right in the moment. Even though he was blind since infancy, Eaglin learned to play the guitar at a very young age. When he was just 11, he won a local radio talent competition and within three years, he left school to make his living as a musician. By the mid ’50s, he was playing in the great Allen Toussaint’s band, the Flamingos. In 1958, Eaglin became the subject of several recordings by musicologist, Dr. Harry Oster. Many of these sides were later released on the Folkways label. Eaglin signed with Imperial Records in 1960 and released a series of records that were more in the tradition of New Orleans R&B than the more blues styled Oster recordings. He continued recording through the ’90s and was a common fixture at the New Orleans Jazzfest for many years. Snooks Eaglin was 73 when he suffered a fatal heart attack on February 18, 2009.
