Feb. 23, 1974: Kathy Stevenson and the Country Kings

 

Once more we run into someone who was just born to be up there on the bandstand. 

Feb. 23, 1974

Kathy Runs House, Job, Country Band 

IF THE EASY CHAIR in her small wood-paneled living room outside East Aurora is sending out any lazy vibrations, they just aren’t getting through to Kathy Stevenson.

          It may be a night off for the Buffalo area’s only female country-western bandleader, but it’s hardly an off-night. She sits as animatedly as she talks, punctuating it all with determined drags on a succession of extra-long cigarettes, butting them quick, sharp jabs.

          Her day starts at 6 a.m. By 7:30, she’s rolling down Route 16 in that red van parked out front, delivering small auto parts, a job she took in September to sustain the family of five after her husband, Art, was laid off as a maintenance man for road construction equipment.

          “Nine times out of 10, I get home around 6 or 6:30,” she says, “and I have just enough time to eat, change and go play. I owe letters to everybody. I don’t have the time to write.”

          Judging from her schedule, those letters may be a long time coming. Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Fridays she and her two sidemen play the lounge at Buffalo’s Amherst Bowling Center, East Amherst near Main.

          One night a week is reserved for practice, and weekends there’s dances, jamborees and benefits. Tomorrow the trio will jamboree at the King of Clubs, Broadway and Miller. Their next jamboree stop is March 16 at St. Mary’s School Hall in Silver Springs.

          “Our three kids, we take them to jamborees and stuff,” she says. “Paul’s 8 and twice already he’s been up on stage and sang with mommy. What’s the one you sang at Uncle Kenny’s birthday? ‘Tie a Yellow Ribbon ‘Round the Old Oak Tree.’ And another time he did ‘Johnny B. Goode.’”

          “Mommy,” Paul says. “You’ll hafta get me a songbook.”

          On the band’s regular dates they’ll return to the King of Clubs March 9, then play the Forks Fire Hall in Cheektowaga March 16 and the Allied Sportsmen’s Club in Marilla March 30.

          “This band must’ve got 12 calls to do the Telethon next weekend,” Kathy notes. “We’re going to do spots at the satellite stations.

          “We’ve got one Saturday at the Polish Union Hall at Fillmore and Broadway, then we’ve got to rush up to Niagara Falls for a job at the LaSalle Sportsmen’s Club. On Sunday, we’ll be at Channel 10 in Lackawanna and later on at the Donovan Post in Cheektowaga.

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“THE TELETHON is a good organization to work for and a worthwhile cause and, like I always say, I never learned to say no. Whenever we get an opportunity to play for kids, we do.

          “If we can give a little crippled kid 10 minutes of happiness, it’s worth it. The best is the West Seneca State School. Those kids treat you like some star from Nashville. It just makes you wanta do all the more for them.”

          In addition to being a bandleader, Kathy is one of the few women to play accordion professionally, a 42-pound man’s model. On stage, she also doubles on bass guitar and organ.

          “When we unload the truck,” she says, “you’d think it’s Glenn Miller’s big band or something come in there and it’s only the three of us.”

          “I sure wish she played only harmonica,” her husband Art says. “It’d be a lot easier.”

          Her bass guitarist, Denny King, and drummer, Tony (Chipper) Pajak, also do double duty. When Kathy plays bass, Denny switches to lead guitar. Chipper, who plays shoeless, shares vocals with Kathy.

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“DENNY,” Kathy says, “he’s the mild one. He’s got his private pilot’s license and he’s a good bulldozer driver.

          “Chipper, he’s crazy. He ad libs and puts on a fantastic show. He used to do impersonations when he had his own group, the Southern Heritage. He drives a snowplow for the Town of Cheektowaga and he’s a stunt man too. He’s the guy who used to fall off the roof at Fantasy Island.”

          Chipper, 27, has been with Kathy since September. Denny, 25, who played in Kathy’s first band almost six years ago, came out of retirement to join the group around Christmas.

          Their sound lives up to the billing on their business card: “Country-Western … Commercial Music featuring Kathy Stevenson and the Country Kings.”

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THE COUNTRY shuffle beat is mellowed, there’s a batch of old rock songs from the ‘50s and the latter-day pop tunes like “Bad Bad Leroy Brown” and “I Can See Clearly Now” get a touch of country good times.

          Kathy’s organ has a skating rink feel (she once played for skaters) and the ad libs fly thick and furious between songs.

          “To get a three-piece group that has a good tight sound, that’s what we’re striving for,” Kathy says. “I have very critical judges too, a good girl friend and my husband.

          “If Art comes up and says it sounds like I’m playing with a pair of boxing gloves on, I know I’d better straighten up.”

          Kathy, now 32, has been eating, sleeping and breathing music since she was a kid. The inspiration was her father, who sang with a quartet and taught her dozens of old standards. He also had an accordion around the house.

          “It was a 12 Bass accordion,” she recalls, “a little thing, nothin’ to it. He came home one night and found me playing ‘Silent Night’ on it.”

          She took lessons for six years and played in her first jamboree when she was 13, then teamed up with Joanie Marshall, the wife of country radio station owner Ramblin’ Lou Schriver, to do the jamboree circuit.

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SHE WAS STILL too young to play clubs without her parents along as chaperones when she joined her first band, Dwight Tucker and the Carolina Ramblers, in 1956. When part of the group broke off to become Charley Petty and the Midnight Rangers, she went with them.

          “I originally started out to be a music teacher, but I just enjoyed being with people so much,” she says. “I worked on and off with Charley Petty for more than 10 years.

          “We worked all out in Batavia, LeRoy, Knowlesville, Medina. By the time I was 18 years old and could drive myself, I knew more about that part of the country than I did about Buffalo.

          “For a couple years I was traveling back and forth to New York City with Barbara Ray, but I couldn’t see living out of a suitcase and the local stuff we do around here is very self-satisfying.”

          The only breaks she’s taken from music were when her children came. With the younger two, she performed until two days before each of them was born.

          “I’ll be a sideman, lead a band, as long as it has anything to do with music,” she says. “I don’t intend to quit for at least another 20 years.”

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IN THE PHOTO: Kathy Stevenson and the Country Kings: Guitarist Dennis King, left, and drummer Tony (Chipper) Pajak.

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FOOTNOTE: Kathy Stevenson kept leading her Country Kings for more than 30 years. Beginning in 1989, after "Accordion Zeke" Cory died, she took his place in Ramblin’ Lou’s annual live Family Christmas Show. When she passed away in November 2019, the death notice observed how “she gave so much of her time to hosting many jamborees for various Western New York fire companies, as well as several charities such as Toys for Tots (and) Muscular Dystrophy telethons.”

Her husband Art’s death notice in 2015 tells us that her maiden name was Gund, they had three children in all, seven grandchildren and two great-grandchildren.

Tony Pajak drummed with the Country Kings for 15 years and for many years led a group of friends and relatives to camp with him at country music’s Woodstock – the Jamboree in the Hills outside Wheeling, W.Va. Sadly, a week after he returned from that Jamboree in 2001 and four months before he planned to retire, he was part of a crew cutting trees in Cheektowaga Town Park when a huge section of a tree trunk fell on him. He was 54.