Traditions: Ohio Heritage Fellows; 101; Katie Laur interview, part 1 of 2

i don't have a cell or a katie lauer l l a u r the first name is katie it l a u r n the only person to disney and the ny our young men in the phone book it's possible answer if you can i grew up all over the place i was born in pairs tennessee are which is stand in henry county tennessee right on the border of kentucky that ten miles from murray kentucky a n when i was about five which moved to detroit after the war moved in about nineteen fifty i think detroit hours a little

girl's hair went to school there and that begin in nineteen fifty eight or fifty man we move to huntsville alabama which is where i really think of myself as having grown up those nicest reports what i really dig out we were the year i was there not at all because i moved since an ad in nineteen sixty six so i grew up into your question i grew up in a lot of different places when you were a kid there was a case of my family my day and in my uncle had both been in the war in the big four and they came back and that's gi bill

scholarships to go to marie state teachers college which is what it was called plan and they did they hadn't got a couple of years under their belt and i went to detroit we all we had a caravan like a wagon train of people going no worse i seventy five was far from finished i didn't even know there was a massive the fact that they have but we wind into cars a hand fatah all that the kids fought all the way and it was hot in and yet we can't repeat that we would go home for every holiday every holiday that was three or four days we were right next to the city and then we go back to detroit so wish we'd burned up the romans uh between their image encased in fat we did it grow up in a neighborhood of

appalachian or country people are southern people and all we just correct that in a normal neighborhood but i do and his brother had never been separated and so they lived we lived on the same street and we played with his children my sister have played with his three children and we grew up that way and we started to singing or sinners were big enough and we started singing in detroit and we sang at the racetracks and we sang at the state fair in all once we sang it a grand ole opry traveling troupe of people i never met minnie pearl here never seen hank williams jr right after stated that in that his widow audrey was sitting in this box as sideways and it was

dark purple chiffon curtain came down over and she just sit there like let them sit and i am dressed in a dark purple are black and the lie would be outside of the box played his day at songs on the guitar and i thought well he's a really good guitar player bodies that have some broad who just you know i was very old i could tell fly and detroit was full so their influence most people think of of the great migration after the war's been black but it was really thought there were a lot of white southerners too so that she had what we called hillbilly music on television you could sit up late at night on friday or saturday night get this one show that was mostly country music and all the bluegrass people that are

so admired or in detroit at that time in the fifties but i didn't know that so i was surrounded by these unmanned bluegrass four sketches as a child but there's a dark side of it too often when we went to school to grade school they were because we didn't live in a community of people like us we were different and i was the oldest so i had to start school and be the pioneer and we could understand anything the teacher force it in my cousins or my sister or out and they thought the kids called as hillbilly in are made fun of this and in so there was painful arm there were a lot of there were so many things that worship or strange to

us drive in theaters my grandmother we drove past the drive in theaters she thought it was a cornfield he would win got pizzas and my father they they say what's as pizzas do you want and my father said well large and they said sir that's really really big bets and he felt threatened somehow that i had and he said that's what we want and so they all came in she huge pizzas and they're about twelve of us there and we were all trying to eat these huge pizzas it was hopeless so detroit had a way of humiliating me if you were not from there originally i still have three cousins two cousins left in detroit and dove we still a half of that those early days our parents didn't know how to

shop in supermarkets oh absolutely i don't know what we would have done without it because it was what we did every friday or saturday night was go down in the basement and get the guitar to get his guitar out and we all played sang my cousins and my mother in miami at play dispense and one as uranium to astaire played piano oh my uncle played the fiddle and we had a national family banging thing happen and that my family always been musical it is the family was always

leery of just our own my family was always musical back in tennessee we had been the go to guys for music for funerals graduations weddings everybody called us and we get whoever we can get together a combination of relatives that were compatible musically and we go saying are they go saying hours too little for the van and it gave us up a place in the age in the community that that was important in my sense i'm convinced it's important in my sense of identification of who i am if if somebody saw me introduce and said say who is there and they would say that's my name they would they would say that's missing

words granddaughter or c ward grade daughter or both a waste granddaughter you had an ideology based on your client in your place in a client and at all what we were primarily interested in in our off hours such as they were was singing as soon as the kids series at the kid's got old enough they descend shooter apart to say you know like alto or soprano or lead an i know a friend of maddy was a bass player sit in school they gave him the base because he had what they thought would be big feet but with our say digital more scientifically with the pitch of the voice would you sing higher tsing loh and when they would pretty with an adult who sang that part to understudy and

deb my sister for instance it can this before but still does have it's beautiful soprano voice and she sang tenor and so she was put with my uncle clarence and i have two such fun house singers was a great thing indeed i was an understudy might not he was the lead singer and then my bed when she that and then one day i woke up my band was dead and i had this awful feeling that i was the leed center in the family and i was supposed to be there and i was it was so poignant anyway we have family when thomas sang in schools that team around him all the singing teachers in those days they had these at tanner

teachers reading there were preachers two who would come into a community and stay a few weeks and then at night he would go to the schoolhouse in half singing arm a team at by doing that now but that's what they did my grandparents and one singing teacher jamie and he must have impressed him a lot because there's a song that he taught them which we all around every child born but we never have heard anywhere else fails call to release a shamrock and i have yet to find one single person has ever heard that's all that they learned it from the preacher or the song singing teacher if you actor piano lessons from started a track

arm or six or not i stayed through high school so like i stayed with the piano quite a while and we also we were considered to be above average music plays a great school like easy tests and stuff and larry's up another story that's my grandfather my mother's day of our week we were kids we were all considered musically interested in grade school and that was in those days there were pregnant time money into music departments in public schools in detroit so i have great music education arne at a rally in both my cousin

sanders rally and my brain day and had since his this fall and with its to detroit of course he had pretty rattlesnake red purse which were considered they were gored for the fun of our fixed it i kept the instrument shirt when you say tony ellis ask him about that because i've never quite understood what role they played that out no mandolin players who keep rattlesnake rattles and their mental and anyway we get to school we have a russian music teacher mr jury in his he had been in the concentration camps or something had suffered in the war any head here that looks like art garfunkel sit

straight and he he took my valley and which pried wasn't exactly the most wonderful violent in the world he said what is this route what system a wasted asset thats thats right thats the roof rattlesnake rails and he just threw himself just like why do i have autism he'll be children that's much for we are considered armed so i did learn valley and eight and played in junior orchestra and but i never learnt to play anything by iraq and granddaddy was so disappointed the syndicate all players think that she got to have music in front of you that's no good so that guitar was the first thing i picked up that i'd learn to play by ear you know i started i didn't take up the guitar really till i came to the

city ad now alumni time they may have started in alabama but i thought was here i did have lessons and it was the air in which they were due and guitar masses at church and so i started playing at some of those it was wrote it i learned a few core court i didn't learn anything standing arm but that's where i started no i had a teacher who gave me the court to copy the courts but and i had a number of musicians who taught he thinks they just kind of was like a stone rolling down a hill is picking up marshes it weighed so that's alan play guitar it has been in the

country how well they played a lot popular music and they played things like the sweetest little of telling everybody knows don't know what to call him but he's like a row things like that they were pretty they were probably songs from the eighty nine east are then i did my new love big band music and weave course love country music listener the grand ole opry called hamp and it was music wasn't so segregated back then everybody could play all or listen to all kinds of music you hear frank sinatra right on the radio the sad at on older are some

artists like death that i particularly loved artists that i was a real honest her gritty at that age for fat there my mother always says that there was a the show they came on the radio called foreman find damp and i would dumb get on a rocking horse ride it and then when it came on and just rockin rock and listen to the radio and the camp are still pretty much true to sign saying without rockets which you know bluegrass really depressed so it sounds like it's an old art form really didn't want that income rental nineteen forty six and my family would not have been geared towards they update a they would've had piano guitar

taliban and they would've played more country music or more popular music or like gas in the old songs i'm sorry matt fisher whoa this is like in some sense it's a heritage is important to children i think it gives them a sense of identity for their own long life and it keeps a mold they have trouble com plus

know and squarely who you are as an adult is a huge exchange don't think it because it reminded me of home it's big the reason i got involved with bluegrass the reason i started listening to deliver this is because it reminded me of home i can remember walking it was it must have been the early nineteen seventies i can remember walking down main street with some friends of mine one night and they had said you've got to go to this place called martinis and they've got this great music you just love it and we win and opened the door and there was joe mccall and david cox jr

mcintyre vernon mcentire and they were playing the salty dog blues well i just was prince figured i'd just handed it i don't think i went home after they asked this hour when in and sat down and became obsessed with that music and i had to play it the harmony there was vocal harmonies that i was accustomed to that was our third support and dumb and there was instrumental virtuosity involved that i appreciated since i've had it a lot of music lessons and when i came to cincinnati in nineteen sixty six because my husband jack wild was for work in a general electorate and saw him appear to be with him we stayed married i think about nine

years and then spoiler because by that time i had got so involved with bluegrass that i think i was probably worth it at night doing bluegrass music and he had gotten out of another direction and we split the sheets as they say in the country you know i can see it i started not i started dedicating our band in nineteen seventy five i had been playing with jim call those guys and i wince all i discussed their program to allay hardly and then arman started my own band in nineteen seventy five and the neighbors that they weren't jeff roberts on bain joe blake griffin on fiddle jeff turf linger on mandolin

riffs rich fled on bass and me on guitar and vocals enhance the first katie are valiant and we were we santa did the minute we started we didn't have any awkward phase it just immediately do it so i knew that was the right bank and yes that wasn't so easy added nobody had told me that just because i was a woman that man did would like mr lee dumas said do i just didn't know there wasn't and now i grew up with all my girl cousins and my girl sister and they always did what i said to do but these casting really wanted a worse it said to do

so as rocky it was hard i'm also then when i went to get bookings at festivals and things for the eye and that was hard to it it was so it was a real main goal to dominate music but when i say that i have to say at the same time that all other music was to another is linda ronstadt after the time and emmylou harris's but that's all i know of any women who are doing anything but gospel music i'm so it never occurred to me that i was doing something trail blazing or anything like that it was just it was just there were times when i'd say what i think we should do it this way and the band didn't want to do it that way and i think

they probably fell should just ignore what issue you know us the time we had big time we had the time we lie afternoon caught up in had we were popular we went on the bluegrass festival circuit and we always would put our records had much more up next ralph stanley's and now watch watch those guys operate man it was something it was it was experienced i don't know if i can go through again but i really wouldn't have missed it but yeah we were in love we didn't like too much rain since a man in those days in winter to get out we do we get a job like a dick seize

up in a place called correale and see some via well weed like a shoe eight martinis are armed tribal thinks of the other places we played arm it would go to dayton play at sam's barbara lot there that was always fun going to date because indeed city alums are harlot well ray allen in harley on the world for instant in nome we would go to and i know that in the winter we go lexington at least once a month to play to the jefferson davis yeah nothing was my mother and we went to charleston west virginia played a lot in charleston the snowman or should really spend money on payday they really liked it at

parties and so we had a good time playing over there oh yeah a lot of my clients he is it's been great

let's here can think for me say it probably is true because we took a lot of songs bluegrass in bluegrass songs to begin with like the eagles are member we recorded peaceful easy for you line we get a lot of things it gets our own age could identify with him did it a bluegrass style so expect there is some truth to their own friends i always pay attention to everything francis it is b neil

and china's new rosemary oh how to dress is different it's more hardcore deal neil rosenberg was something of a bluegrass expert who is the bluegrass expert next to for it it as fred barnes time he said that you could almost hear the sound of the assembly line in the bluegrass from this region from the massively five corridor the stamp of the assembly line it just gets harder aged is it goes from northern kentucky to dayton very much more and then you hear the the bluegrass from the mountains from north carolina east tennessee it's old chancellor they talk about kevin holmes on the hill and certainly our blue breast is to allow bluegrass but there's also this this longing for

home you their way he got home oh how progress uses the same repertoire but it's ailments harder aged and also people who can go how family bars and then there's more hockey tom gage to allow deliveries if that makes sense but there is a difference in his marriage effect fred knapp did this circle organization called b graze dot com to in weed fred really did a lot of the cancer and of nine i started the organization that frankie answered the names of people who or bluegrass influences himself he enter so many of them it was really a revelation he was a way to honor them

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