New Orleans Street Singer : Snooks Eaglin : Review : Rolling Stone

A devastated, evacuated New Orleans is a city of silence, empty of the music that can electrify you at any hour, anywhere you turn on the street. That is where folklorist Harry Oster found the blind blues virtuoso Snooks Eaglin one day in the late Fifties. The singer-guitarist was already a local R&B star: He had played on Sugarboy Crawford's 1954 version of "Jock-A-Mo" (better known as "Iko Iko") and was a band mate of the young Allen Toussaint in one of the city's top combos, the Flamingos. Oster recorded Eaglin as if he'd just walked off a plantation -- solo, with acoustic guitar. But in these 1958 sessions, Eaglin's blues are sharp and modern. "Sophisticated Blues" is a blistering display of guitar chops. And, as he does today, Eaglin takes firm, soulful possession of everything he sings, from Lead Belly's "Rock Island Line" to "Helping Hand (A Thousand Miles Away From Home)," a Fats Domino number based on a hobo's lament about forced exile that's as true and hurting as today's headlines.