Biography:Bill Katon

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Bill Katon


     
 Given name:     Bill
 Middle name:     
 Family name:     Katon
 Place of birth:     Cave community, southern Callaway County, Missouri
 Place of death:     Cave community, southern Callaway County, Missouri
 Year of birth:     ?
 Year of death:     1934
 Profile:     Musician
 Source of information:     
     

Biographical notes


According to researcher Howard Marshall (Play Me Something Quick and Develish, 2013), Bill Katon (or Caton), was born in the Cave community, a community of free blacks established in the hills of southern Callaway County between Dixie and New Bloomfield. The community remained fairy isoloated and self-contained, but intereacted with each other and with whites at the Dixie general store. Another local musician, records Marshall, Vernon Clatterbuck, who grew up on a farm near the Cave community recalled that Katon, often wearing a suit and tie, would walk past the Victor schoolhouse in Dixie community, carrying his violin in a sackcloth. "On many occasions," writes Marshall, "the schoolteacher would hail Katon and ask him to play for the children; Katon aways obliged" (p. 121).