Obit: Cathy Barton (1955-2019)

Subject: Obit: Cathy Barton
From: Joe Offer
Date: 18 Apr 19 - 11:49 AM

I see Facebook reports that Cathy Barton has died. She had been sick with cancer for quite some time. Can anyone give us more information?

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Here's a link to some recent performances by Cathy Barton and Dave Para: (click)

Subject: RE: 2019 Obit: Cathy Barton
From: GUEST,Bob Coltman
Date: 18 Apr 19 - 12:20 PM

This is tragic news. From Dave Para's Facebook page, in a posting by her niece, I understand Cathy died from cancer. She was a wonderful person, a fine musician and singer, and Amba and I, along with many many more, will miss her very much.

Bob

Subject: RE: 2019 Obit: Cathy Barton
From: wysiwyg
Date: 18 Apr 19 - 02:35 PM

Oh no!

Subject: RE: 2019 Obit: Cathy Barton
From: Thomas Stern
Date: 18 Apr 19 - 02:42 PM

from Ballad list:

-----Original Message-----
From: Paul Stamler [mailto:[e-mail]]
Sent: Thursday, April 18, 2019 2:14 AM
To: ballad-l
Subject: Cathy Barton has passed

Hi folks:

I'm grieved to report that Missouri singer and performer Cathy Barton passed tonight, peacefully, surrounded by friends, family and music.
Here's a link to her Caring Bridge site:

https://www.caringbridge.org/visit/cathybartonpara/journal

Peace,
Paul

Subject: RE: 2019 Obit: Cathy Barton
From: leeneia
Date: 18 Apr 19 - 08:52 PM

I'm so sorry to hear that.

Subject: RE: 2019 Obit: Cathy Barton
From: Phil Cooper
Date: 19 Apr 19 - 01:25 PM

Yes, Cathy passed away Wednesday night. I had seen her a year ago at the Gebhard Woods Dulcimer Festival when she had been temporarily been declared cancer free, or it was in remission. I had had heart issues at about the same time, so we were talking about our experiences. She thought I had had the worst of the two maladies, I don't think I did. We also agreed that it was probably worse on our spouses, since they had to wait while we had procedures done to us. I was very saddened to hear the cancer came back a few months later. According to the caringbridge posts that Dave put up, she was in good spirits up to the end. She was able to perform at the Big Muddy Folk Festival the weekend before she passed. She was a good friend and I'll miss her.

Subject: RE: 2019 Obit: Cathy Barton
From: Elmore
Date: 19 Apr 19 - 05:10 PM

My heart goes out to Dave and all of Dave and Cathy's friends and family

Subject: RE: 2019 Obit: Cathy Barton
From: Thomas Stern
Date: 19 Apr 19 - 07:46 PM

from Ballad-L

From: Paul Stamler [mailto:[e-mail]]
Sent: Friday, April 19, 2019 3:35 PM
To: ballad-l
Subject: Obituary for Cathy Barton Para

Hi folks:

This appeared in the Columbia Missourian just now:

https://www.columbiamissourian.com/obituaries/cathy-barton-para-june-april/article_6c45994e-62c8-11e9-855d-9b5ab64a624e.html

Peace,
Paul

Subject: RE: 2019 Obit: Cathy Barton
From: The Sandman
Date: 20 Apr 19 - 08:22 PM

i did not know CathyBarton, i decdeed to look up her music, here is a clip lovely dulcimer playing, her music will live on ,beautifiul playing
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QeMGeE3MgTk

Subject: RE: 2019 Obit: Cathy Barton
From: The Sandman
Date: 20 Apr 19 - 08:32 PM

this is beautiful too, how sad, my condolences Dave Para
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=92msa5ReD2o

Subject: RE: 2019 Obit: Cathy Barton
From: Waddon Pete
Date: 21 Apr 19 - 07:03 AM

I was very sorry to hear this news. I have always enjoyed her singing and playing. I have added Cathy's name to the "In Memoriam" thread. My condolences to all those who know and love her.

RIP

Peter

Subject: RE: 2019 Obit: Cathy Barton
From: Joe Offer
Date: 21 Apr 19 - 09:40 PM

Cathy Barton and Dave Para were part of two of the five beautiful "Golden Ring" albums recorded in the famous living room of Sandy and Caroline Paton. They were on the On a Night Like This holiday album, and on For All the Good People, A Golden Ring Reunion. Those five albums will always be favorites of mine.
There's a YouTube playlist for On a Day Like Today, an album Cathy and Dave did with Ed Trickett:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gPtDCSlKywM&list=OLAK5uy_mc2c3v5wkWNa8YlV5zHywFNrsp-10HmN0

-Joe-

Subject: RE: 2019 Obit: Cathy Barton
From: bbc
Date: 22 Apr 19 - 04:35 PM

Oh, no! What awful news! My sincere sympathies to Dave!

With love,

Barbara

Subject: RE: Obit: Cathy Barton (1955-2019)
From: Joe Offer
Date: 23 Apr 19 - 05:20 PM

Here's the obituary from the Booneville (Missouri) Daily News:

https://www.legacy.com/obituaries/boonvilledailynews/obituary.aspx?n=catherine-jean-para-cathy-barton&pid=192635945

Here's the text:

Catherine Jean "Cathy" (Barton) Para (1955 - 2019)

Local musician Cathy Barton Para, 63, of Boonville, Mo., passed away gently among family and friends at home, Wednesday, April 17, 2019.
Catherine Jean Barton Para was born June 12, 1955, in Fort Benning, Ga., to Claude D. and Mary Ruth Catlett Barton. An "Army brat," she lived in Pennsylvania, Kentucky, Virginia and Hawaii before moving to Columbia in 1967. She attended West Junior and Hickman High schools and Stephens College, from which she graduated summa cum laude in 1977. She received a master's degree in folklore from Western Kentucky University 1979. She married David Para at First Baptist Church in Columbia in 1979 and began a long and happy union with her lifelong love and fellow musician.
Cathy's active interest in music began in elementary school in Hawaii and grew during her school days in Columbia. A champion banjo player, she also was one of the first hammered dulcimer players in the region and inspired many players nationally. Her playing was vibrant and she was a generous and thoughtful teacher. She and Dave shared a musical career for more than 40 years, traveling the U.S. roads and rivers and Europe, specializing in traditional music from the Missouri – Ozark region. They were awarded by the Missouri Humanities Council, Young Audiences of Kansas City and the Folk Alliance Region Midwest. Stephens College named her a distinguished alumnus in 1993. In a fruitful 20-year collaboration with the late Bob Dyer, they produced three music albums related to Missouri history which were awarded by the American Library Association. They started the Big Muddy Folk Festival for the Friends of Historic Boonville. She performed with Dave at the 28th festival held April 5-6. The couple made 16 albums.
Cathy was a beautiful and benign person, and she performed as she lived, with her radiant smile, inviting laugh and unabashed joy, endearing her to the communities of home and career.
In addition to Dave, she is survived by two sisters, Claudia (Tom) Welsh and Judith (Tom) Gibbons, both in Texas, an uncle, Roy Barton in Memphis, and countless grieving and grateful friends.
A memorial service is scheduled for Saturday, May 4, at 3 p.m., at Boonville's First Christian Church. A cemetery visit and a musical gathering will follow.
Memorials are suggested to KOPN Community Radio, Friends of Historic Boonville and First Christian Church. Published in Boonville Daily News from Apr. 22 to Apr. 29, 2019

Subject: RE: Obit: Cathy Barton (1955-2019)
From: Joe Offer
Date: 23 Apr 19 - 05:33 PM

There's a nice article about Dave and Cathy in the Old Time Herald (Volume 11, Number 4, April-May 2008):

http://www.oldtimeherald.org/archive/back_issues/volume-11/11-4/barton-para.html

Cathy Barton and Dave Para: Lives on the River
By Malcolm Smith
It’s a short walk from Cathy Barton’s Boonville Missouri home to her beloved Missouri River. Much like the rolling and churning waters of the Missouri, the currents of traditional music and the history and folklore of the Little Dixie region and the Ozark Mountains have been constant flows in Cathy’s and her husband Dave Para’s lives. “Rivers have become a metaphor for my life, ” says Cathy. “You journey down the river and you end up going to the sea when you pass on. It is the progression of life.”

For nearly 30 years, Cathy and Dave have been riding the torrents of the music surrounding the “Big Muddy,” assimilating the influences of powerful Missouri fiddlers like the late Taylor McBaine from Boone County and the raucous frailing banjo of Cathy’s mentor, the legendary Grandpa Jones, into their music as well as the gentle lyrical poetry of their dear friend and Missouri poet and historian, the late Bob Dyer. The outflow from these influences has been phenomenal, including 11 full-length recordings and numerous collaborations with other musicians. In addition, Cathy and Dave have become talented teachers, sharing both their talents as musicians and their skills as historians and folklorists with students in public schools as well as attendees at national music camps like Banjo Camp Midwest, the American Banjo Camp, and the Heritage Dulcimer Camp.

Cathy, who is as well known for her artistry on the hammered dulcimer as for her driving banjo style, has been playing music since the age of seven when she was introduced to traditional music on the ukulele at her elementary school in Hawaii. “I guess you could say I was an Army brat,” says Cathy who was born in 1955 at Fort Benning, Georgia, and followed her father’s military career from there to Pennsylvania, Kentucky, Virginia, and the Hawaiian island of Oahu during her childhood. In 1966, the Barton family settled in Missouri, and it has been Cathy’s home ever since.

It was during junior high in Columbia, Missouri, that Cathy first took up the banjo. It was the height of the folk revival and Missouri and Cathy purchased a cheap long-neck Silvertone and tried to teach herself bluegrass finger rolls. “I just never grasped those rolls,” she said, “but then I started to take lessons from a local teacher, Lee Ruth, who taught Pete Seeger styles, and I learned to frail.” And then, one day, while thumbing through the recordings in her high school library, Cathy found a National Geographic recording entitled “Music of the Ozarks.” The field recordings made in and around the Mountain View, Arkansas area, a pocket of traditions protected by the steepness of the rural mountain range, led Cathy to a deep love of traditional fiddle and banjo styles of the region. Learning traditionally, by ear, Cathy began to frequent Missouri fiddlers’ conventions and coffee houses and began to become accomplished at the Missouri style of clawhammer playing referred to by the locals as “sling handing.”

Subject: RE: Obit: Cathy Barton (1955-2019)
From: bbc
Date: 23 Apr 19 - 10:48 PM

Thanks, Joe!

Barbara

Subject: RE: Obit: Cathy Barton (1955-2019)
From: Rex
Date: 24 Apr 19 - 06:34 PM

I have long enjoyed Cathy and Dave's renditions of the music of the Missouri region. But what I admired most was her crisp playing of the banjo. Sorry to learn she is gone.

Rex

Subject: RE: Obit: Cathy Barton (1955-2019)
From: Mark Ross
Date: 25 Apr 19 - 07:25 AM

I got to share a banjo workshop stage with her and Dave at Old Songs some years ago. A lovely person, and a fine musician, she will be missed.

Mark Ross

Subject: RE: Obit: Cathy Barton (1955-2019)
From: bbc
Date: 26 Apr 19 - 08:39 AM

Cathy performed this at the 28th Big Muddy Folk Festival, just a couple of weeks before she died. What an altogether warm, lovely person!

Love Call Me Home

Remembering with love,

Barbara

Subject: RE: Obit: Cathy Barton (1955-2019)
From: GUEST,Melissa Ronayne
Date: 27 Apr 19 - 05:16 PM

I sat behind Cathy and Dave at a gospel sing at Kentucky Music Winter Weekend back in January. She shared the most fastinating song with us. It was a responsorial hymn, I think. I hope someone remembers it and we can sing it in her honor someday. Cathy was so...wonderful!

Subject: RE: Obit: Cathy Barton (1955-2019)
From: Janie
Date: 29 Apr 19 - 06:36 PM

Joe Newberry posted a link to a nice article published today in the Boonesville Daily News.

https://www.boonvilledailynews.com/news/20190429/cathy-barton-para-remembered-for-her-smile-and-style

Subject: RE: Obit: Cathy Barton (1955-2019)
From: GUEST,Folk1234
Date: 29 Apr 19 - 08:19 PM

Thanks Joe for posting this. Cathy and Dave inspired me to take up folk music.

Subject: RE: Obit: Cathy Barton (1955-2019)
From: The Sandman
Date: 02 May 19 - 04:09 PM

refresh

Subject: RE: Obit: Cathy Barton (1955-2019)
From: GUEST,Sheila Ewall
Date: 09 Aug 19 - 04:58 PM

Read in the Pinewoods Newsletter regarding Cathy's passing. I'm sorry to learn the bad news. I want to convey my condolences and express my heartfelt sympathy to Dave Para and family. Let's hope for better and brighter things now and in the future to come. Take care, regardand be well.