Copyright © 1996, OffBeat, Inc.
WritingJunkie Note: As of this posting, many of
OffBeat's links on the original page were not functioning.
Here's a direct link to that funky magazine,
which deserves full credit for this Myles article.
OffBeat Magazine

When Raymond Anthony Myles takes the stage at the Gospel Tent he is usually accompanied by the sound of screaming women. At the sight of this extravagantly dressed man, a shiver of delight runs through the crowd, anticipating the celestial, honey dripping voice and show-stopping flamboyance for which he has become known as "the Little Richard of gospel."

Soul-diva Patti LaBelle discovered this firsthand during last year's Essence Festival, when she randomly called up audience members onto the Superdome stage to help her sing her 70's hit, the Allen Toussaint penned "Lady Marmalade," in front of 70,000 people.

"She was looking for singers," remembered Myles as he sipped sweet ice tea at Two Sisters, a popular soul food restaurant on N. Derbigny St., "I happen to be on the first row in the middle, and she pointed at me...I was the last of the three people. The first two guys could not carry a note. So she said, 'Can anybody sing in here?' By the time she got ready to come to me, well the place starts screaming because people know she's about to get the shock of her life. So when she gave me the mike, it was unreal. People lost their minds. They hollered and screamed."

Explosive performances like this have made Raymond Myles' appearances over the years in the Gospel Tent one of the great pageants of New Orleans soul. Influenced by the church as much as by Aretha Franklin, Donny Hathaway, Stevie Wonder, and Ray Charles, he has the unique ability to transform a diverse audience into his own personal congregation.

His performance to close out the Gospel Tent on April 28th should be no exception, as Myles is still riding a wave of success following last year's release, A Taste of Heaven, which won raves from Billboard and Rolling Stone. His gospel brunches every Sunday at The Praline Connection have made him an important fixture in the local music scene and this year he shares the bill on one of the Jazz Fest night concerts with George Benson and B.B. King. Clearly, Raymond Myles the entertainer is beginning to outgrow Raymond Myles the New Orleans gospel singer.

Raymond began singing at the age of five, when his mother placed him on top of a box in church to sing "Just A Closer Walk With Thee." In one of his earliest memories growing up in the St. Benard housing project, he remembers climbing to the top of the bench on his porch and imagining that the courtyard was full of hundreds of people swaying to the sound of his voice.

"I'm the ninth out of ten children," he says, "and my mother struggled with us. She was on welfare and my father was not around. The typical 'growing up in the ghetto story,' but I never had a ghetto mentality. Because I lived in the projects did not mean that I could not conquer all the things that I saw other people achieve."

Performing regularly with his mother as "Christine Myles and Son," he became a popular attraction at church functions. "Sometimes I would start a song like 'Precious Lord' and she would finish it, or the other way around," he remembers. "They had to drag people out of there."

Word of the child's talent spread quickly. When he was in eighth grade he was chosen to sing at gospel matriarch Mahalia Jackson's funeral, an event which is still one of the highlights of his life. But as he gained stature, he also began to chafe against the confines of his environment, already struggling to express himself through his appearance. "You could only do so much because back in those days it was mandatory to wear uniforms" he says, "but I always had to add a little something. For example, if we had to wear black shoes and a black belt with the khaki uniform, I would slip in a red belt someway, somehow."

This desire for self-expression did not become serious, however, until he was brought into the studio to cut a record at the age of twelve. Raymond's mother gave consent to record him singing "Prayer From a Twelve Year Old Boy," but had no idea about the song on the flipside, "You Made a Man Out of Me, Baby," until it became a small national hit. Back then, the openly sexual nature of the song was enough to have Raymond and his mother ostracized from the church, which was especially painful for his devout mother.

This rejection from his own community only reinforced his feeling of isolation and deepened his longing for acceptance, but it also made him independent and assertive. By the time he was sixteen, he was already living in his own apartment and paying bills.

"Anything goes nowadays," he says, "but when I was coming up it was hard, because people just did not understand, singers and musicians are different people, we are not the norm, we're weird...

"Only thing I knew is that I did not want to be like some other people. I wanted to be me. And I had a problem with people accepting me, okay, and when I found out who I was, and when I found out whose I was, life became much better for me."

Myles addresses this hard road to self-acceptance in the prayer-like introduction to "Learning To Love," one of the heartfelt originals on A Taste of Heaven, where he says: "You know, I've discovered that some of ya'll are so unhappy with yourselves. Too many of you are trying to keep up with the Jones' instead of just being who you are...And you know what else I found out? I found out, my friends, that before you can learn to love anybody else, you've got to first learn to love yourself."

Universal messages like this make the gospel of Raymond Myles redeeming on a non- denominational scale. This is perhaps best exhibited by Leo Sacks, a journalist and freelance producer from New York who independently produced A Taste of Heaven. "I was an editor for Billboard when I wandered into the Gospel Tent in 1983 and stumbled on this voice, this bear of a man in rhinestones and jewelry, named Raymond Myles," says Sacks.

"The nation was just beginning to feel the effects of the Reagan presidency. Social programs were being cut; the homeless and mentally ill were appearing in greater numbers on the street. I saw it firsthand in New York, and it got worse as the decade wore on. But the rest of the nation hadn't really felt the full effect. Raymond gave me hope. He sang from the voice of experience. They were simple truths and the beauty of his voice reminded me that the spirit of Donny Hathaway, who's had a profound effect on Raymond, was still with us. It was Mother's Day and I had one of those great, cleansing cries that seems natural in the Gospel Tent. Ten years later I heard Raymond again and I just knew we had to make a record."

His production uses a traditional gospel format, with Myles singing and playing piano or synthesizer and his choir backing him up for full effect, but there is a strong undercurrent of popular music here. The church meets the street with spine-tingling exuberance on numbers like "Elijah's Rock" and "Put a Little Love in Your Heart."

The reissue due out this spring will include new artwork, a slightly better sound mix and a new sequence. Also, a startling live version of Elton John's "Border Song," for which Myles' seems to reach down into the deepest part of his soul.

This album makes it clear that Raymond is ready to complete his split from the church which began twenty five years ago with "You Made a Man Out of Me, Baby." His next project, Myles says, will be comprised of secular love-ballads and message-oriented rhythm & blues.

"I never was a religious person," he says. "I was reared in the church because that's all I knew...I have always said, and most people have said, that my music and my personality is too much for the average church...I don't want to be known as being a gospel singer. That's not taking anything away from gospel music. I love singing gospel music. But I am a singer. I am an entertainer. People know me from singing gospel music so they say 'gospel giant' or 'gospel great' Raymond Myles...I don't want to be categorized. When people say Raymond Myles I want them to say, UN-real. He is an awesome entertainer."