Marshall Grant

Marshall Grant (born May 5, 1928 , † August 7, 2011 in Jonesboro , Arkansas ) was bassist in the backing band of country musician Johnny Cash , the Tennessee Three .

biography

Grant grew up with eleven siblings in Bessemer City , North Carolina . In 1946 he married Etta May Dickerson; the couple had a son. In 1947 the family moved to Memphis , Tennessee , where Grant initially worked as an auto mechanic.

Grant played guitar in his spare time, and together with Luther Perkins they called themselves the "Tennessee Two". They met his younger brother Johnny Cash through Roy Cash, who also worked as a car salesman like Perkins . 1955 received Perkins and Grant together with Johnny Cash a record deal with the label Sun Records ; Grant had meanwhile switched from guitar to bass .

Grant was also successful as a composer, writing the duet Long Legged Guitar Pickin 'Man for Cash and his wife June Carter Cash . In 1980 Marshall Grant left the band, which had grown around drummer WS Holland in 1960 and was renamed " Tennessee Three ", in which the guitarist Perkins, who died in 1968 , had been replaced by Bob Wootton . In 1999 he was on stage for the last time with Cash and Holland; Cash died in 2003.

From the 1980s until her retirement from the music business in 2002, Grant was the manager of the Statler Brothers , which were part of the Johnny Cash Show in the 1960s and 1970s . In 2005 his autobiography I Was There When It Happened - My Life With Johnny Cash was published .

Marshall Grant lived in Hernando , Mississippi with his wife . Shortly before his death, he traveled to Arkansas to attend rehearsals at the Johnny Cash Music Fest before being admitted to hospital in Jonesboro, where Grant died of an aneurysm on August 7, 2011, aged 83 .

Individual evidence

1. ^ Marshall Grant, Bass Player With Johnny Cash, Dies at 83. The New York Times , accessed August 9, 2011 . 
2. ↑ Marshall Grant of the Tennessee Two is dead. Country.de, accessed August 9, 2011 .