By Mark Flanigan

Photos by Malcolm J. Wilson

The Urban Appalachian Community Coalition welcome this guest post from Mark Flanigan honoring the late, great Katie Laur. The UACC community knows Katie from her many activities throughout the Cincinnati area, including her participation in our 2018 Urban Appalachian Showcase at the Aronoff Center for the Arts, and from our exhibit, Perceptions of Home: The Urban Appalachian Spirit, in which these photographs by Malcolm J. Wilson appears.

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Katie Laur, the doyenne of the Cincinnati bluegrass and jazz scenes of the 1970s through the early 2000s, who possessed a singular voice instantly recognizable whether heard via song, in her writing, or as a radio disc jockey, passed away peacefully at her home in Mt. Auburn on August 3, 2024.

Beloved by all who knew her, Nancy Katherine Haley—known as Katie—was born on January 18, 1944, in Paris, Tennessee into a family whose collective heart was music, one that thereby provided a beat that Katie kept her entire life.

After Katie’s father served in World War II, the Haley family moved from Tennessee to Detroit to find work in the auto industry, as did many others from their extended family as part of the Great Appalachian Migration. It was there at the age of 10 that Katie—along with her sister Jackie, and their three cousins Linda, Sandi, and Patti—formed the Haley Sisters, a group for whom Katie acted as musical director and by which she served notice of her intent to pursue a lifetime dedicated to creativity. Performing at local venues around Detroit, the group broke up only once the Haley family moved to Huntsville, Alabama. Reflecting on her early days, Katie said, “I feel quite sure that music was our salvation, that it saved us from kind of going down in the drain… Because no matter how bad things got, you could sing and once you sing you always feel better.”

Katie moved to Cincinnati in 1966, where she at first worked for the Air Force at General Electric in Evendale. But it wasn’t until 1972 that she would experience her personal Big Bang and find her spiritual home, when one summer day Katie ventured into Aunt Maudie’s Country Gardens on Main Street and was instantly captivated by the strains of bluegrass, and where she was almost as quickly invited on stage to perform regularly with the likes of Jim McCall, Vernon McIntyre, and the Appalachian Grass because of her ability to sing harmony. As Katie herself said about walking into Aunt Maudie’s that first day: “I went down there and the door opened, and that was, I think, the most electrified feeling I have ever had… I felt like I lit up like a Christmas tree. It felt like every part of my body smiled… Maybe it felt like coming home.”

Katie would soon serve as lead singer with Jim McCall for two years at both Aunt Maudie’s and King’s Row in Clifton, but left his band in 1974 to form her own—The Katie Laur Band—with several locally and nationally known musicians, marking one of the first times—if not the first—that a woman fronted a touring bluegrass band. Despite the difficulties of being a female pioneer in a heretofore male-dominated industry, The Katie Laur Band played Cincinnati regularly, toured extensively (including multiple stops at Prairie Home Companion), and recorded three albums: Good Time Girl (1975), Cookin’ with Katie (1977) and Misbehavin’ (1979), all for the acclaimed Vetco label. Her 1975 recording of “T for Texas,” in particular, has been singled out for having won acceptance for female singers on bluegrass radio and paving the way for future female bandleaders in the genre.

Yet, Katie was not one to limit herself stylistically. A lifelong lover of jazz, she also began performing with the Dee Felice Trio in Cincinnati clubs, and over time would become equally well-known in that circle. Black Tie (1982), her jazz album, was released by Vetco’s sister label, Octev.

Nor would Katie limit herself creatively. Inspired at first to describe her experiences at music festivals, she would over time become a distinguished writer who contributed stories about her adopted hometown of Cincinnati, as well as the many celebrities and performers whom she knew personally, to periodicals such as Ohio Magazine, Everybody’s News, CityBeat, and Cincinnati Magazine, culminating in the publication of her 2022 collection of essays and stories titled Red Dirt Girl (Orange Frazer Press).

Incredibly, Katie would discover still another way—beyond both her singing and her writing —to leave a large imprint with her voice. In 1989, she was asked if she would like to be a disc jockey for WNKU, an NPR affiliate station broadcasting from Northern Kentucky University. Music from the Hills of Home, her resulting bluegrass radio show, would run for over 27 years, becoming WNKU’s longest running local program. Lively and largely unscripted, Katie’s exhortation to her co-hosts to “Mash the buttons” became a familiar local catchphrase while the show simultaneously widened her audience—and the music that reminded of her of her home—beyond that, to worldwide.

Throughout the years, Katie would continue to both play and release music, most notably The Katie Laur Band’s Main Street (1997) on Jim-Bob Records, as well as an album with a new group, the Katie Laur All-Girl Bluegrass Band. She would subsequently receive a number of major honors and awards in her lifetime, including in 2005 being honored by The International Bluegrass Music Association as a “Pioneer of Bluegrass;” in 2008, as a recipient of an Ohio Heritage Award; and, in 2018, by being formally recognized by the city of Cincinnati for, among other things, “her many musical contributions to Cincinnati and the nation.”

Warm, brilliant, confounding, and hilarious, Katie continued to play music and sing until the day she died, inviting friends and family into her home to do so once she could no longer go to them.

Preceded in death by her father, Jack; her mother, Susie; her beloved sister, Jackie; and her singing partner cousin, Sandi, Katie is survived by her son, William Taylor Brown; her treasured niece, Rebecca; her nephew John; her singing partner cousins, Patti and Linda; and an army of fellow musicians, singers, fans, and friends the world over.

A Tribute to Katie Laur will be held at OTR Stillhouse in Cincinnati on Sunday, September 29, from 3 PM till 7PM. 2017 Branch St, Cincinnati, OH 45214. All are welcome.

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Mark Flanigan is a writer of fiction, non-fiction, poetry and screenplays, as well as a performer, editor, and event producer. He is currently working on a compilation of narrative non-fiction based on his long-running literary column which was published in City Beat from 2001-2012. He is co-founder of Cincinnati’s longest running feature/open mic reading series, Word of Mouth Cincinnati, founded in honor of Aralee Strange. Mark is editor of Strange’s posthumous poetry collection, The Road Itself (Dos Madres Press, 2018.)