Katie Laur Band
Bands / Ensembles
The Katie Laur Band was a bluegrass band from Cincinnati, Ohio, formed in the mid-1970s by singer Katie Laur, one of the first women to front a touring bluegrass band. Laur, a native of Paris, Tennessee, moved to Cincinnati in 1966, discovered bluegrass there, and sang with Appalachian Grass and then Jim McCall's band before leaving to start her own. The band played Cincinnati regularly, toured widely, and appeared several times on A Prairie Home Companion. It recorded three albums for the Cincinnati label Vetco: Good Time Girl (1975), Cookin' with Katie (1977) and Misbehavin' (1979). Good Time Girl featured Jeff Roberts on banjo, Buddy Griffin on fiddle, Fred Bartenstein on guitar, Tommy Boyd on resonator guitar, Don Parker and Bill LaWarre on mandolin, and Tom Nutini on bass, and its version of "T for Texas" was widely played on bluegrass radio. Griffin also engineered Laur's radio program, Music from the Hills of Home on WNKU, which she started as the band was winding down and hosted for more than 27 years. Laur died on August 3, 2024.
In the newsletter
- No. 16 Fall 1998