Dpop singer Tony Marshall proudly bore the nickname “the nation’s cheermaker”. He had fought hard for life: one of his two brothers was killed before his eyes at the age of 17. At first it looked as if the businessman’s son, born in Baden-Baden in 1938, would tend towards serious music. Early on he sang in the church choir and learned to play the violin. With a scholarship he studied at the State University of Music in Freiburg. Here he had his voice trained by the Kammersänger Fritz Moritz Harlan and studied piano as a minor. In 1965 he passed his state examination as an opera singer at the Karlsruhe University of Music.
It was also economic constraints that finally led the father of two sons and a daughter, who was married to his childhood sweetheart, to the hit. Winning a talent contest in 1966 brought him his first record deal. From then on, Herbert Anton Bloeth bore the stage name Tony Marshall.
In cooperation with the producer Jack White the great success came in the seventies. Titles from this time are “On the Road to the South”, which was later made into a megahit by David Hasselhoff (“Looking For Freedom”), “Bora Bora” and of course his biggest hit “Beautiful Maid”, which has more than one year in the charts.
Aged 85
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Pop singer Tony Marshall died
Marshall enjoyed success, also as moderator of the Tony Marshall Show on ZDF, but he also contributed heavily to the image as, as he himself called it, a “tralala singer”. He found it all the more fulfilling when a director engaged him for the musical “Anatevka” in 2004. For five years he played the milkman Tevje at the Frankfurt Volkstheater and on tours, incidentally alongside the young Helene Fischer.
Tony Marshall’s late work with titles like “Teeth like stars, they come out at night” testifies to a relaxed approach to human frailty, which he also had to get to know on the hit stage. Once he sang “Rosamunde” and asked the audience if there was a Rosamunde. An elderly lady came up to him and he danced with her. After he brought her back to her table, she fell off the chair, dead.
The FAZ told God-doubter Marshall, who like Pierre Boulez is an honorary citizen of Baden-Baden, that he would not turn back on his deathbed, unlike Voltaire. That was 2018. May he, who died on Thursday after a long illness, still be in a good place, not dissimilar to Bora Bora and with beautiful maidens.