A TASTE OF HEAVEN: The Ecstatic Song & Gospel of Maestro Raymond Anthony Myles

I was completely unprepared the first time I saw Raymond perform in the Gospel Tent at the New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival in 1982. I was a skeptical New York journalist, on assignment for Billboard magazine. Raymond seemed to have something very much like healing powers. His artistry was charged with the most stirring and soulful music I had ever heard.  He spoke to me in ways that other music never had and I wrote about his masterful gifts in Billboard.

Ten years later, when no one else would, I produced “A Taste of Heaven,” Raymond’s first and only full-length studio album of original material, and released the album independently.
Raymond poured his heart and soul into the project. But the gatekeepers in the mainstream gospel music industry refused to acknowledge Raymond as a marketable artist. The perception that he was queer would alienate their evangelical base, they said. To Raymond, the notion that his sexuality might actually alter his destiny was unthinkable. And the burden fell upon my shoulders, as his producer, to break this heartbreaking news. 

“‘If I’m a Christian,’" he demanded, ‘"doesn’t that make me a child of God, too?’”

Then he grew defiant. "‘Don’t they know I’m talented?’”

It was only after Raymond’s murder that I fully understood the significance of why he chose to call the album “A Taste of Heaven.” Call it the intuition of man who was always in touch with a higher spirit. 

When the levees failed after Katrina and the world's greatest musicians were scattered to the winds, I organized the New Orleans Social Club and produced a benefit CD called "Sing Me Back Home" which Sony Music released in 2006. Everyone at the session knew Raymond, and he should have been there. And yet he was, in spirit and in memory. That’s when I decided to make A TASTE OF HEAVEN: The Ecstatic Song & Gospel of Maestro Raymond Anthony Myles. 

Raymond's triumph and tragedy lay in his failure to grasp the artistic and creative goals just when they were within his reach, and just before he might have won the acceptance he so deeply craved as an artist and a man. 

Had he lived, who knows where Raymond's journey might have taken him. With its thrilling combination of soul-stirring gospel music and fresh perspective on culture, spirituality and religion, A TASTE OF HEAVEN: The Ecstatic Song & Gospel of Maestro Raymond Anthony Myles takes us down those untraveled roads.

The pandemic and social protests in 2020 made clear the sharp differences of our two Americas. Raymond's message of compassion and tolerance is a musical bridge between these worlds. It's almost like Raymond is still here, waiting in the wings for his next star turn.

New York City
Fall 2024