Ex-Billboard Writer Undertakes Labor Of Love For New Orleans' Gay Gospel Legend Raymond Myles

In 1982 on his first visit to New Orleans was when Leo Sacks correspondent age 25, which covers the Billboard Jazz & Heritage Festival in New Orleans, who wrote about a vibrant artist and powerful gospel singer named Raymond Myles, who led an energetic choir called the Rams (Raymond Anthony Myles Singers).



It was a moment that irrevocably changed the personal and professional lives of Sacks, leading to what became a fascination with music, heritage and culture of New Orleans that continues to this day.

“Raymond was like Little Richard, Liberace, Michael Jackson, Donny Hathaway and James Cleveland, all in one," says Sacks, see Myles.

"Seeing Raymond prowl the stage of the Gospel Tent , leading to dozens of RAMS in their silk , Sunday , I imagined what it must have felt Jon Landau like seeing Bruce for the first time ," Sacks says sadly .

"I was envisioning the future, too, just did not quite turn out that way for me and Raymond."

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In their daily work, Myles was a music teacher in public schools in New Orleans that brought a crowd of young people away from drugs , gangs and ruin during a murderous crack epidemic in New Orleans in the 90s .

Sacks went on to produce his CD single long-term study, the 1995 album “A Taste of Heaven”, which released independently on his own label Honey Darling. The finished album received rave reviews in Billboard, Rolling Stone, Mojo and many major newspapers. Sadly, every major gospel label rejected the album for distribution.

"The key word was that Raymond was" too extravagant, '"says Sacks.” They felt it was unsalable due to the perception that he was gay. The tasters decided that their lifestyle was too much for his evangelical fans to accept. "

Sacks can still remember the heartbreaking moment broke the news to Myles.

“If I am a Christian man that does not make me a child of God, too?” Sacks recall asking Myles defiantly.

"It was unfathomable to Raymond that this musical dynamo, this volcanic force of nature, this messenger of hope and healing, may be rejected for being gay," says Sacks. "It was unthinkable for him.”

Myles was shot in his own car, in October 1998 , his body thrown out of the French Quarter, characterized the killing by police as a carjacking , but apparently the victim knew his murderer . The funeral was the largest that New Orleans had ever seen outside of Louis Armstrong and Mahalia Jackson.

Sony / Legacy briefly re -released “A Taste of Heaven" in 2003 and has subsequently recovered Sacks rights.

But the legend and musical legacy of Raymond Myles is still alive, thanks to those ardent fans as Harry Connick, Jr., Dr. John , Davell Crawford , Harry Shearer, Aaron Neville and Allen Toussaint ( Myles was signed to indie label in the time of his murder ) and appearance this year at the festival of jazz singers Raymond Myles .

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In the first weeks after the devastation of Hurricane Katrina, the now 57-year- old Sacks formed the New Orleans Social Club (with members of the Neville Brothers and The Meters) and produced “Sing Me Back Home ," which The Boston Globe called " a treatise on the great American music. "

"Everyone knew Raymond at meetings, and I should have been there, and yet was, “Sacks says, “in spirit and memory.” That's when he decided to create Sacks " A Taste of Heaven: The Life Heartbreak Raymond Myles, Gospel genius of New Orleans " by the sinking $ 75,000 of their savings in the movie.