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Larry Broad was born
March 9, 1936
in Valentine,
Nebraska
into a musical family. As a toddler, he learned to plink out tunes on
the piano at his mama's knee. When he entered fourth grade he took up
the violin, playing in the school orchestras throughout his school
years. After moving to
Washington,
Larry started listening to Buck Ritchey playing Country music on
the radio around 1953. He particularly liked a style he would later
learn was referred to as Western Swing. He said it just had a certain
different feel to it that he really enjoyed.
After graduating from high school in 1954, Larry joined the Air Force,
where he learned to play the mandolin. He started playing Western Swing
while stationed in
Georgia
where he met Pete Drake and the fiddler of his band, Johnny Gimble. He
started playing fiddle seriously after that. While playing warrn-up for
Buck Owens and his band at the
Macon
City
Auditorium, he met Buddy Rich, who played fiddle for Buck Owens. One
night after the show, the Owens band found themselves locked out of
their car with the keys inside. Larry helped get the keys by breaking
open the wing window of the car and retrieving the keys. He got out of
the service in 1958 and started learning the banjo.
Returning to
Washington,
Larry started a radio show called the
Fort
Lewis
Jamboree, at KA YE radio in
Puyallup,
playing with his sister and Cole Shelton for about a year and a half.
Larry moved to
Georgia
where he played mandolin with a band playing a lot of Hank Thompson and
Bob Wills tunes. While there, he built a double necked guitar and
mandolin on which he played lead on the mandolin and rhythm on the
guitar .
Moving back to
Washington
in 1973, he joined Vern Plank and the Valley Drifters at the White Spot
in
Kent,
doing a variety of country and Western Swing for the next two years.
Larry says, "As for Western Swing, it is innovating and unique in
musical phasing. It grabs your ear, twists it, and says listen to me!"
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