Monday, December 11, 2006

Marshall Sehorn RIP


Thanks to Dave for alerting me to the death of yet another New Orleans R and B legend - this time Marshall Sehorn. Sehorn is best remembered for his partnership with Allen Toussaint where they founded Sansu Enterprises and recorded some great tracks by the likes of Betty Harris and the Meters. But he also worked as southern promotion man for Bobby Robinson's Fire and Fury labels, in which role he was instrumental in discovering Wilbert Harrison and Lee Dorsey and arranging their first successful recording sessions. He also recorded Bobby Marchan's clasic There is something on your mind. Later Sehorn and Toussaint set up the Sea-Saint recording studio in New Orleans which kept the city's recording industry going almost single handedly in the seventies.
I've come across a great blog which gives more details of Marshall Sehorn's life - as well as much more fascinating southern soul stuff - and it's well worth a look:
http://redkelly.blogspot.com/
I haven't seen an obituary of Sehorn in the mainstream media, but there's a good one on Jay McShann in today's Times which is worth a look. http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,60-2497582,00.html

2 Comments:

At 9:29 pm , Anonymous Anonymous said...

Marshall Sehorn was a fine man. He loved the music business. He co-wrote with his then client Elmore James, "One Way Out", which many of us heard for the first time on the Allman Brothers' "Eat A Peach" album released around 1972. Many of Marshall's achievements (co-production with Allan Toussaint of The Meters and Lee Dorsey) have been noted but many don't realize that Marshall also discovered Gladys Knight & The Pips and signed them to Fury Records....I will miss his humor and his wit. RIP Marshall.

 
At 2:30 pm , Anonymous Anonymous said...

I worked for some years in the 1980s as a representative for Marshall in the UK. Through career and country moves I lost touch with him professionally and only spoke to him a couple of times in the past few years. I was just idly looking him up on the net, to see if there was any news when I saw that he had died in December. I was shocked and really sad. I have extremely fond memories of him. He had some wonderful stories to tell. He stuck his neck out for black music and black artists in a time and environment when that sometimes earned him a beating (as when he represented fire and fury). I know he had a mixed reputation but he was never anything other than honest and generous with me, even coming over from the states at one time to defend his rights and my reputation against MCA. A truly sad loss.
Rosalind Buck
France

 

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