Known as the Human Jukebox, Snooks Eaglin was one of the most extraordinary guitar talents New Orleans has ever produced — a blind guitarist whose repertoire encompassed some 2,500 songs and whose ability to play virtually any style of music with total authenticity made him a legend on the city's scene for fifty years.
Biography
Born Fird Eaglin Jr. in New Orleans in 1936, he lost his sight as a toddler from glaucoma and a brain tumor. He taught himself guitar by listening to the radio and was performing professionally by his early teens. In 1952 he co-founded the Flamingoes, a popular young R&B combo, with pianist Allen Toussaint. His 1959 Folkways recording New Orleans Street Singer caught him in acoustic mode, playing solo blues of startling maturity. But his most celebrated work came in the late 1980s and 1990s, when his series of albums for Black Top Records revealed a fully formed electric blues guitarist of enormous power and range — capable of playing jazz, R&B, funk, country, and Latin music with equal facility, often within a single performance. George Porter Jr. once said that Snooks could call songs on stage that weren't on the set list and his sidemen just had to hang on.
Discography
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