Louis Kahl - IMM President: On Da BIO
Born in the early 50's in New Orleans, Louisiana. From an early age Louis was listening to the sounds of New Orleans on the radio. Fats Domino, Lee Dorsey, Irma Thomas, Franky Ford, Huey "Piano" Smith, Ernie Kdoe and Allen Toussaint, to name a few, were laying R & B neuron foundations in his brain. At age 9 he got his first guitar and by 14, with a fake ID he was playing guitar at a strip joint on Bourbon Street. After a few more years of gigging around New Orleans, he met up with a band of guys called SKOR. SKOR was a four piece rhythm section that flat cooked New Orleans style and they soon landed a recording contract with Sea-Saint Studio, Allen Toussaint and Marshall Seahorn, the back bone of the New Orleans recording scene for so many years. There he met and worked with some of the legends of New Orleans music. Lee Dorsey had just completed the "Night People" album for ABC records and needed a band to work it. SKOR filled the bill. Louis and Lee became friends and worked many shows together around the country until Lee passed away in 1985. "Working with and backing up people like Lee Dorsey, Allen Toussaint, Aaron Neville, The Meters, Huey Smith, and Franky Ford also Skip Godwin, Sea-Saint engineer, was a very cool time in my life, I got to pick with and learn from these great artist, the ones I used to listen to on the radio when I was a kid." says Louis. In 1980 Lee Dorsey was asked to do The CLASH Tour. Lee hired his band SKOR to back him up for the tour. "I remember Lee was just getting over a bad motorcycle accident" says Louis, "they (the doctors) wanted to amputate one of Lee's legs, the other leg they would try to save, it was a really bad accident, anyway Lee told me that with all of his might he wiggled his big toe and so convinced the doctors to save it." The tour was 6 to 8 months after the accident so Lee was walking very gingerly. We did 7 cities in 9 days, East and West coast. Then about a year later The Clash did a one night concert at The Warehouse in New Orleans and asked Lee and SKOR to be the opening act. In 1993 Louis and family traded New Orleans for The Great Smoky Mountains of Tennessee. They settled in Pigeon Forge where Louis built a recording studio. Louis regularly serves up a spicy mix of Bayou Blues, Rhythm and Blues and a little Bayou Rock and Roll. He calls this mixture SWAMP MUSIC. You know the old saying, you can take the boy out of the Bayou, but--	Louis Kahl at the New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival.   Louis (on right) with SKOR at New Orleans Sea-Saint Studio in the 70's. (Photo by Larry Ordoyne)     Louis and Lee Dorsey
In June 2005, SKOR was inducted into the Louisiana Music Hall Of Fame, three months before Hurricane Katrina hit. "I had been working on getting 24-track digital copies of the SKOR sessions recorded back in the mid to late 1970s at Sea-Saint Studio with little progress. There were about 30 songs recorded on the then standard 24-track 2-inch tape format. We did have copies of most of the sessions on cassette and some on 1/2 inch but nothing was ever a mixed finished product", says Kahl. If I could get copies of the tapes I could mix them at my Tennessee studio and finally finish what was started 30 something years ago. More...
	Induction into the Louisiana Music Hall Of Fame
© 1998 - 2007 Iron Mountain Music - All Rights Reserved. Mailing Address: 608 Iron Mountain Road - Pigeon Forge, TN 37863