Katy - A Lifetime of Country Music
Montana Kay's "Musical Round-Up" 1930s-1950s 🌿MEMOIR
This post is from the Katy Archive, where I keep stories of my mother’s remarkable life. If you have read it before, thank you! If you are a new subscriber, you may find it of interest for it’s historical context or for glimpses of recorded country music from 1930s - 1950s.
The direct quotes in this story are from a taped interview of Katy when she was 75 years old. The tape and transcript of her voice are priceless to her family.
The song tracks included here were copied on to CD’s from original primitive recordings of Katy, and are not professionally remastered. They are from our personal family music archive. They have never been heard by anyone but family. Until now.
“I wanted to be a singer. I liked those old cowboy songs. How I got my first guitar was that my brother Frank owed me. He was working for the neighbors, milking their cows and one Sunday he wanted to go somewhere, but he couldn’t be home in time to do the milking for them. He told me that if I would do the milking for him he would get me a guitar. And so I did and he got me a Sears Roebuck guitar for $6. It was black and white and had a white stripe down through the middle of it. It came with a little instruction book, ‘Learn to Play the Guitar in Fifteen Minutes’.
I would go to my bedroom all to myself and sing. I could make myself cry with my sad songs! The horses and cows were my only fans. I would go out to the barn to sing to them or sometimes in the pasture. Can’t you just imagine those old cows with their big brown eyes and their drooly noses, mooing just because I sang to them? Those are memories I love.”
When Katy was about 15, she went to the Devil’s Lake Amateur Hour. Her aunt Barbara and brother Frank took her to sing. She got up on a stage with her $6 guitar for the first time and sang Sweethearts or Strangers in the highest, purest little voice. She told us, “Everybody thought I was pretty good, but I didn’t win anything.”
At that Amateur Hour, they cut a little metal record of Katy singing this old song. It is one of our family’s greatest treasures. It has been copied from the original metal disc onto a CD, but the static could not be removed. It is worth listening to her through the noise. Stay with it.
16 year-old Katy – 1936 – Devil’s Lake, North Dakota, 88 years ago
Sweethearts or Strangers
“ I listened to the radio out of Yankton South Dakota when I was a young girl. They played country music like Montana Slim, Jimmy Rodgers, Tex Ritter. I used to love the Carter Family and the Kentucky Ramblers, and Little Jimmy Dickens – all those guys. That’s where I got all my dreams and ideas about making music. After I ran away from my family, I sang and played in the boarding house where I worked in Butte, Montana.
In 1941, I went to a rodeo in Butte and they had this little booth there, kind of like a phone booth. You could go in and close the door and push a little button and sing a song and then they would give you a little metal record of your voice. I made two of them and dedicated both to my husband, Ralph. We hadn’t been married but a couple of weeks.”
Here are Katy’s two songs from the rodeo recording booth. She was 21. They were copied to CDs from the original discs and they too have quite a bit of static, but they are so darned sweet – a young bride singing to her soldier husband who was then stationed in Camp Callan in San Diego.
Katy’s songs from the Rodeo –1941– Butte, Montana, 83 years ago.
I’ll Wait For You
My Old Pal of Yesterday
Katy continued with her music in the 1950s, when she was in her early thirties. She sang regularly at Brady’s Bar on Saturday nights in Santa Cruz, California, bringing in crowds of heavy-drinking country music fans. She had a program, “Montana Kay’s Musical Roundup”, on KSCO radio in Santa Cruz — her biggest fans being residents at the prison over in Soledad. She received piles of fan mail from prisoners requesting special songs. KSCO recorded a few of her programs and we have them on brittle and chipped 78s. Copying them to CDs was a little more successful than the older ones.
Katy, age 31, singing on KSCO radio – 1951 – Santa Cruz, 73 years ago
The Love Bug Itch
Married by the Bible, Divorced by the Law
Katy continued to sing at family gatherings until she was 85 years old. She had a few really risqué songs that were always the most requested by her grandchildren. She would wink at them and her eyes would twinkle devilishly as she sang. She left behind a wonderful legacy of music for her family. As we children grew to be adults, all three of us became musicians ourselves to different degrees - singers, guitarists, songwriters and she encouraged us always.
I hope you enjoyed stepping back in time with me and hearing these old tunes. As children we didn’t much appreciate what we disparagingly called “Okie Music”. But now, as we age, it becomes more and more nostalgic to us and we often sing her old songs, and, yes, we sometimes weep, as if we are with her again. She would no doubt be mortified that I send these recordings out into the world now. Oh, how I wish she were here to chastise me.
Yep - the last sentence says it all. What instrument did you - or do you - play?
We have our Idaho version of her in Rosalie Sorrels, who passed away in 2017. She is definitely worth a listen.