Snooks Eaglin

In his New Orleans hometown, the nickname "human jukebox" applied to the ever-impressive guitarist Snooks Eaglin carried no negative connotation whatsoever. The sightless musician ranked among the Crescent City's most cherished performers, admired equally for his raw vocal style shaped by Ray Charles and his strikingly original guitar technique, as well as for the vast mental catalog of vintage numbers he could summon without warning during live sets, frequently leaving his accompanying musicians startled. Folkways captured his initial sessions in 1958, documenting Eaglin as a lone acoustic folk-blues performer whose song selection spanned an unusually broad range. Although his intricate fingerstyle work proved remarkable, his true ambition centered on performing R&B backed by a full band. Imperial Records producer Dave Bartholomew provided that chance in 1960, yielding striking outcomes. Eaglin's sinuous, inventive lead lines distinguished "Yours Truly," a Bartholomew original previously recorded by Pee Wee Crayton, along with its follow-up "Cover Girl," setting them apart within the New Orleans R&B landscape, while his anguished delivery on "Don't Slam That Door" and "That Certain Door" proved deeply compelling.

Eaglin remained with Imperial until the company shuttered its New Orleans operations in 1963, never achieving wider national recognition. Black Top Records became his recording home during the 1980s, issuing four albums including the 1988 release Out of Nowhere, later reissued on CD by P-Vine in 2007, and 1995's Soul's Edge. P-Vine issued Soul Train from Nawlins in 2003, drawn from a live performance Eaglin gave at the 1995 Park Tower Blues Festival. Smithsonian Folkways released New Orleans Street Singer in 2005, compiling his earliest acoustic guitar recordings. Snooks Eaglin sustained an active performing and recording career well into the twenty-first century, culminating with his last album, The Way It Is, in 2002. Few realized that prostate cancer had been diagnosed in his final years. Admitted to Ochsner Medical Center in New Orleans during February 2009, he suffered a fatal heart attack on the eighteenth of that month at age 73.