Carolyn Howard

I was born in Hamilton, Ohio. and moved to a little town called Inez Ky, when I was five, My dad was Jimmy Howard and my mother was Anna Mae Felts Howard. They played Bluegrass music. My dad was very talented and played guitar, mandolin, fiddle and banjo. But mandolin was what he was best known for while my mother guitar but was better known for playing doghouse bass. In addition, they both sang and they played all over from Ohio to Indiana and Kentucky. The now legendary Larry Sparks played with my dad in 1962 when he was just aged 16. My dad always had a band and among some of the well-known sidemen that played with him were Charlie Sizemore and his father Henry Clayton Sizemore.

It was Country and Bluegrass legend Hylo Brown who was a very big influence on me. When I was only five years old, Hylo stood me up on a chair beside him and he and I sang “We Must Have Been Out Of Our Minds,” a George Jones and Melba Montgomery song. By the time I was seven years old, he had me playing on the guitar. I never took any lessons; it just all came natural. At about the same time, I became a great fan of country and bluegrass music and my biggest influences were Loretta Lynn and John Duffy.

By the time I was 14, I had a Country band and got my first shot in a nightclub called Franco’s bar and Grill. I played there for three years and then married at the age of sixteen. I still played music in the nightclubs all around the area of Eastern Kentucky and West Virginia. I then quit the business to bring up my children.

I started back in music in 1998 with a band called Plain Country. In August 2004,I made my move to Decatur Tn and put together Carolyn Howard's K-T-Grass and found myself back playing in nightclubs, birthday parties and dance halls Bluegrass is my roots and my love. Music has been my life and it has been what has kept me sane.