Maude, Billy & Mr. D - A Folk Opera - (CD)
Katydid Books & Music - 1956 -1981

Way back in the mid fifties, I read a story in the Saturday Evening Post titled,"The Rider on the Pale Stallion", written by Helen Eustis, an author well regarded back then in the heyday of folk music and folk tales. Her story simply cried aloud for music and rhyme, so I began making it into a Folk Opera--writing lyrics and music, using the author's words in-between the songs to keep the story intact.

While I was performing at the Blue Angel in New York, and had almost finished the music, I looked her up. I played it on my guitar, sang it for her, and learned that her original title was Mr. Death and the Redheaded Woman; that it had been performed for Television--acted (no music) by Eve Marie Saint and Lee Marvin. She pronounced it "horrible," told me mine was the best treatment of her story yet, and encouraged me to finish it - which I did and began performing it in concerts throughout the USA.

Next thing I heard was from Marge and Gower Champion, back in Hollywood. They wanted to make a TV movie of her story using my music and lyrics. Now, the only way they could have known about my version was from Helen herself, but when we got to the table, they wanted my music and lyrics for free. Of course, by then I'd copyrighted both, so there was no way they could use it without my consent. They ended up acting the story, rather than dancing it. Once again Helen pronounced it, "Horrible." For more than ten years I performed Maude, Billy & Mr. "D" (the title I'd given my work) in concert; keeping audiences from three to ninety-three in spellbound silence.

In the mid 70's I recorded it, but still did not put it on the market; being intensely involved in writing a book about my years as an explorer in Glen Canyon; actively protesting the building of a dam that would kill the river and canyons I loved; performing all the while for cowboy poetry gatherings, ecological seminars, non-profit organizations, middle schools, Colleges and Universities.

I have always considered Maude, Billy & Mr."D" to be the best work of my entire musical career, bringing together the talents of composing-acting-playing-singing, in one non-stop, forty-two minute, performance, that was recorded at the height of my career. So... with my middle finger up in the face of blaring cacophony that's called "music" today, I have decided to make a Western Story in Melody, Rhyme & Prose available to those who want to take an intriguing journey by listening to a lovely Folk Tale with a philosophical concept that everyone can relate to.

Now Maude rode high and she rode low,

Through the sheep and the cow country, way down below.

She rode through the sheep country up on the hill

Where the lone eagle circles, so high and so still.

She rode through the Injun lands where the wind whines,

To the furaway mountains, through the yallerjack pines.

Her daddy's poor pinto stumbled over the boulders,

And Maude's red hair tumbled down o'er her shoulders.

The shadows so dark stole the light from the ground;

The hoot-owl and night critters gathered around;

A lean, hungry lion roared loud from its lair,

And the slip of a silver moon rose in the air.

$30.00 - Postpaid

The Last Wagon - (DVD)
Produced by Katie Lee - Katydid Books & Music

This is an ORIGINAL, two of the best known and loved songs of the Old West sung by the cowboys who wrote them, along with their stories of how and why they did so. Gail Gardner wrote "The Sierry Petes" (Tying Knots in the Devil's Tail) and Billy Simon composed the music for Charles Badger Clark's famous poem, "The Border Affair" (Spanish is the Loving Tongue). Few who sing it know where the melody came from!

Gail and Bill were in their 80's when Western musicologist and folksinger, Katie Lee, filmed them in Prescott, Arizona at Simon's Horse Camp and in the old house where Gail was born. She drew out their anecdotes, humor and philosophies and their sense of place in a West long vanished.

The film received a Golden Eagle Award from the Council of International Nontheatrical Events (CINE) and was chosen to represent the USA in international motion picture events. It is adapted from two chapters if Katie's book Ten Thousand Goddam Cattle; is written, directed and narrated by Katie Lee; photographed and edited by Harry Atwood; and produced at the TV Bureau, University of Arizona.

"A heartwarming tribute complete with authentic dialogue and the sounds of thundering hoofbeats, bawling cattle and creaking windmills. Katie Lee, a legend herself, has done a masterful job."

Jim Bob Tinsley

Love Song To Glen Canyon - Images, Words & Song - (DVD)
Produced by Katie Lee - Katydid Books & Music, 2007

With Songs and Narration by Katie Lee--145 Photographs of Glen Canyon, taken from 1955-1963, BD (Before the damdam)

Discover why Pulitzer Prize author Wallace Stegner called the canyon, "The most serenely beautiful of all the canyons of the Colorado River. And why Sierra Clllub founder, David Brower, called the drowning of this national treasure, " America's most regretted environmental mistake."

$20.00 - Postpaid

Glen Canyon Betrayed - A Sensuous Elegy - Foreword by Terry Tempest Williams.

A reprint of All My Rivers Are Gone with new design, photos, cover, Afterword and Index.

"There was once a canyon called Glen...buried under that cesspool called Lake Powell. Now we stand our watch. If we continue to let places like Glen go to wrack and ruin, it is on our own heads. Because Katie Lee has shown us how to do better. And the lesson is simple. Fight."
- Chuck Bowden, author of Down By The River and Inferno.

$20.00 - Postpaid

Sandstone Seduction - Rivers and Lovers, Canyons and Friends - Foreword by Ellen Meloy

Katie collects her most creative writing; telling us about events that shaped her life; her encounters with water and rock; remarkably candid and abundantly frank. She's been listening to the water and absorbing its lessons for more than fifty years.

"Sandstone Seduction is so full of gusto, high times, good people, and outright beauty, that it makes you want to laugh, cry, and head for the wilderness right now."
- John Nichols, author of The Milagro Beanfield War & Mountains Die.

$20.00 Postpaid

Ten Thousand Goddam Cattle - A History of the American Cowboy in Song, Story & Verse With annotated music (guitar cords), Chapter Notes, Glossary, Bibliography and Index.

"A joyous book about cowboy songs and their singers. Katie Lee sets the record straight. Written in a breezy, conversational style with refreshingly unlaundered vocabulary."
- Arizona Highways Magazine.

"A beautiful job, exact, comprehensive and witty. Should remain a basic history of the subject for many year to come."
- Edward Abbey.

"A book that blends verse, prose and music for the most enjoyable volume on the cattle industry since Frank Dobie died."
- El Paso Times

Two chapters from this book have been adapted for Katie's award winning DVD, The Last Wagon, which is also available HERE.

$22.00 - Postpaid

Colorado River Songs - (CD)
19 Historic River Songs, played and sung by Katie Lee

Sold as a set w/ free tape of Glen Canyon River Journeys.

$18.00 - Postpaid

Glen Canyon River Journeys - (CD)
Readings from All My Rivers Are Gone, interspersed with songs.

Sold as a set w/ free tape of Colorado River Songs.

$18.00 - Postpaid

Ten Thousand Goddam Cattle - (CD)
28 Songs from the book "Ten Thousand Gddam Cattle", played and sung by Katie Lee, Travis Edmonson, Earl Edmonson and Will Holt. This includes a booklet of complete program notes from the original double LP record.

$20.00 - Postpaid

Fenced! - (CD)
Some of the best songs I've ever sung. Lonesome, sad-happy-funny songs, so Western you can hear the chaps flap. Simply done; just me and my guitar.

$20.00 - Postpaid

His Knibbs and the Badger - (with Ed Stabler) - (CD)

Ed and I took several poems from the famous works of Henry Herbert Knibbs & Charles Badger Clark, set them to music, arranged them, played and sang them together. We even surprised ourselves they turned out so well!

$20.00 - Postpaid

Loves Little Sisters - (CD)
Katie's Documentary of the Early America Whore. A one-woman show based on two famous folksongs: The House of the Rising Sun and Sisters of the Cross of Shame.

$20.00 - Postpaid

The Pagan - 18" x 24"
A nymph in a beautiful rock canyon of the Glen. Taken in 1957 I was younger then!

$25.00 - Postpaid