Katie Laur

Photographs ©1996 Malcolm J. Wilson

Born in Paris, Tennessee, bluegrass and jazz singer Katie Laur grew up in Detroit, where her father took a job with Chrysler when she was five, and in Huntsville, Alabama, where he worked on Redstone rockets. Both places she felt "like an outsider looking in," she says. The same was true in Cincinnati, where she moved when she married a General Electric engineer in 1966. Until one night when some friends suggested she check out this bluegrass bar down on Main Street:  

“About 1972, I was really at loose ends and I walked into Aunt Maudie’s. And it was like being saved. It was like God had called me. I was electrified. I cannot describe to you how stunning that experience was for me. I can remember just standing in the doorway, hearing them play "Salty Dog Blues," Jim McCall and Junior McIntyre. I just stood stock still and smiled all over my entire body, and I thought, this is home." 

Perceptions of Home: The Urban Appalachian Spirit ©1996 The Urban Appalachian Council (now Urban Appalachian Community Coalition)

Photographs ©1996 Malcolm J. Wilson; Interviews ©1996 Don Corathers

Photographs digitized by the Cincinnati and Hamilton County Public Library. Genealogy & Local History Department.