Photographer and Haunted History Tours owner Sidney Smith dies at 71

SIDNEY HOFFMAN SMITH, a local entrepreneur, businessman and nationally renowned rock photographer whose work formerly graced the pages of Rolling Stone, Cream, Circus and Hit Parader magazines and whose images are enshrined in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in Cleveland, passed away on Friday, September 5, 2025, after a protracted battle with cancer at age 71.

SIDNEY HOFFMAN SMITH

Smith, a very successful businessman and tour operator, ran several businesses across the country, eventually focusing his efforts on New Orleans-based Haunted History Tours, the area’s most successful ghost, cemetery, and paranormal-focused tour company.

Prior to his founding of Haunted History Tours, he created and ran an entertainment company – Merry Minstrel Singing Telegrams – with offices and franchises in Baton Rouge; Gulfport and Biloxi; Indianapolis; as well as Tampa-St. Petersburg-Clearwater and Jacksonville, Florida. Smith counted himself among many of his company’s most requested performers, often appearing at birthday celebrations, anniversaries, and bachelor and bachelorette parties. Previously, Smith was the public face of Eastern Onion, the singing telegram company that first arrived in New Orleans in 1977.

Born in New Orleans in 1954 to Joseph Ellis Smith and Beryl May (née Hoffman) Smith, both teachers, he possessed an unusually quick artistic mind. Smith learned visuals arts from his accomplished father, who had mastered painting, sculpting, woodcarving, printing from wood cuts and the art of film photography.

As a child of the 1960s, Smith was exposed to the British Invasion bands and other popular American musicians of the time. He was most influenced by The Beatles, a group for whom his entire life became enmeshed. He picked up the guitar and began to teach himself to play and sing.

Although he had learned the rudimentary use of cameras and darkrooms under his father’s tutelage, it wasn’t until after his father’s passing in 1970 that he began to apply himself as a true photographic artist. Around the time The Beatles broke up, he began to take photos for the Alcee Fortier High School newspaper, The Silver and Blue, and also contributed to The Tarpon, the school’s yearbook.

It was also while he was still a high school student that Smith began taking his camera to The Warehouse, a local venue for rock music situated in a vacant warehouse at 1820 Tchoupitoulas Street. Photographers were not always welcomed to take photos of artists, but Smith being determined to get good shots came up with a system. He would often take photos of the roadies and sound and technical engineers for groups like the Allman Brothers, Johnny Winter and Edgar Winter and present them with the developed pictures at a later date. When he would take pictures from the side of the stage or, sometimes, on the actual stage, the roadies and others would often protect him from the occasional venue employee or tour manager. That didn’t mean he didn’t get flung from several stage tops along with his camera equipment from time to time. Eventually, though, groups like The Allman Brothers admired his work and welcomed him to catalog their many concert tours across the country and he was given unfettered access to backstage at the biggest venues in the country.

Following his graduation from Fortier High School in 1972, he was offered a position as a sessions and album photographer for Capricorn Records, the Allman Brothers’ recording label, a part of the extended Warner Brothers, Elektra and Atlantic Records family. He lived in Georgia for a year getting to know the Allman Brothers and their extended family as well as other highly respected Capricorn Records artists.

Smith returned to New Orleans searching for an alternative career and began supplying rock music publications like Rolling Stone, Cream and Circus his exclusive photographs. He was recommended in 1975 to be Paul and Linda McCartney’s photographer of record for the duration they were in New Orleans to record the album “Venus and Mars” at famed Sea Saint Studio under the guidance of famous record producer, composer and arranger Allen Toussaint. Smith was overjoyed and considered this opportunity the highlight of his career as a photographer. While the McCartneys were in New Orleans during Mardi Gras, Smith captured several photos of them in disguise in clown face and wearing clown suits. Unfortunately, even in disguise, many Beatles fans recognized the couple, and they were forced to watch parades from atop the second-floor balcony of Kolb’s Restaurant, which Smith captured on film.

Smith’s later photography included images of other rock icons like Beatle George Harrison, Bob Dylan, Tom Petty, Led Zeppelin, The Who and scores of others. But through the years the band he was most associated with continued to be The Allman Brothers. Prior to the COVID pandemic, he released a 256-page book of photographs with commentary “’70 –’74 Plus a Little More: A Photographic Memoir on the Early Years of The Allman Brothers Band from the Archives of New Orleans Lens-Man, Sidney Smith.”

Smith’s private lifestyle swung from the traditional to the audacious. He was married four times during four different decades beginning in the 1970s and through the millennium. He moved to Baton Rouge to start his business in 1978. His first marriage resulted in the birth of a son, Justin Robinson Smith, in 1981 and he later built a home in nearby Kiln, Mississippi.

When his businesses started to sputter, Smith began to examine the nascent tourism industry and the thought of organizing ghost tours on an expanded basis took shape in his mind. He collected a number of local performers and organized his Haunted History Tours company, a thinly-veiled tribute to The Beatles’ “Magical Mystery Tour.”

Like he had reached out to the roadies when starting up his photography career, Smith passed out brochures to dozens of concierges on a weekly basis and worked closely with them to get bookings for his tours. Around this time he met his third wife, who became a principal in Haunted History Tours with him and wrote several books on the occult.

Smith was a dedicated father to his own son and to his wife’s special needs child, Stephanie, who died in 2013, more than a decade after the breakup of the marriage.

A lover of parties, especially those with music, Smith celebrated his birthday and festive holidays with massive crawfish boils and catered spreads, first at his home in Kiln and later at his Uptown spread on Fontainebleau Drive. Live bands would entertain the crowds throughout the day and into the night. One of his most important musical finds was his engagement with and promotion of Brandon “Taz” Niederauer, a guitarist prodigy who Smith considered one of the most gifted players in the world, despite him only being nine years old when he first discovered him.

Smith was predeceased by his son Justin Robinson Smith in 2023. He is survived by his sister Lois Hellings of Tallahassee, FL and his two nieces Deborah Hellings, also of Tallahassee, and Teresa Hellings of Tampa.

Rabbi David Gerber of Gates of Prayer Synagogue will officiate. Interment will be private. Lake Lawn Metairie is in charge of the arrangements. A celebration of his life will be held at a future date at the Pavilion of the Two Sisters in City Park.