Education
She graduated from the University of Arizona with a Bachelor of Fine Arts.
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Katie Lee
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After that, she went on to study with two of the most successful folksingers of the 1940s, Burl Ives and Josh White. After joining a rafting trip in the Grand Canyon she became a regular on river trips on the Colorado River and joined the opposition to the construction of Glen Canyon Dam. In September and October 1955 she, Tad Nichols, and Frank Wright traveled through and documented parts of the Glen Canyon that later were to be submerged.
Her early folk music albums, Life is Just a Bed of Neuroses (1960) and Songs of Couch and Consultation (1957) are long out of print, but six of her later CDs are still available.
She has also released three videos, including Love Song to Glen Canyon (Digital Video Disc, 2007). In 1964, Lee released an album on Folkways Records, entitled Folk Songs of the Colorado River.
In the 1980s she recorded a cassette-only release Colorado River Songs consisting of old songs popular among river runners on the Colorado River and the Grand Canyon, and some original compositions. This release was hailed by Edward Abbey and David Foreman among others
Colorado River Songs was expanded to include more songs and re-released in 1997 on Civil Defense. She has also released Glen Canyon River Journeys on Civil Defense, which mixes music and spoken word commentary, and is featured on the 2005 Smithsonian Folkways compilation album, Songs and Stories from Grand Canyon.
She has also written three books: Sandstone Seduction, Ten Thousand Goddam Cattle and All My Rivers Are Gone. Ten Thousand Goddam Cattle is a study of the music, stories, and poetry of the American cowboy. lieutenant was also recorded as an album.
Sandstone Seduction, a memoir, relates her continuing love affair with desert rivers and canyons, and discusses her Lady Godiva-style bicycle ride through downtown Jerome, Arizona, where she lives.
In October of 2011 Katie Lee was inducted into the Arizona Music Hall of Fame. Chronicles of her adventures in Baja California appear in the book Almost An Island written by Bruce Berger.
Lee presently lives in Jerome, Arizona. The song Gunslinger from "Songs of Couch and Consulation" was translated to Swedish in 1965 and was recorded by Per Myrberg as "Skjutgalen".
Utah Phillips praised Katie Lee and "Songs of Couch and Consultation" on the 1996 album The Past Didn"t Go Anywhere on the track "Half a Ghost Town".
Her song lieutenant Must Be Something Psychological was featured in an episode of United States of Tara in 2010. lieutenant was featured in a Chilean, French, German, Turkish and Dutch commercial for the Axe brand of deodorants in 2012, and also in the United Kingdom and Ireland for its version, Lynx. And used as the theme tune for the Sky Arts comedy series Psychobitches in 2013.
