Biography

The following quoted biography is from the OMFA 1986 book, page 153.

 “I was born in Royalton, Kentucky in 1914.  My folks moved to Ohio near the Ohio River near Jackson County when I was 3 years old. We lived there 12 years and then in 1932 moved to Hardin County near Kenton, Ohio. I came from a large family of 13 children. My father was a school teacher, a merchant and farmer.

I have worked at Ford Motor Company at Willow Run and almost 33 years at Tecumseh Products.

I play by note and ear. I took lessons when I was in my teens for 2 years. I became interested in music when I was 5 years old, as both my parents played. Mother played the organ and father played the violin, five-string banjo, piano, and bass. My first violin was a half size. I sold garden seed to get it. At the beginning my father would hold the violin and I would draw the bow. I would watch where he placed his fingers to play the tunes. One day Dick, my little brother, busted the violin with a hammer. We worked long hours and hard on the farm, so I had very little time to play music. At the noon hour I would grab a fiddle or banjo and try to imitate songs I heard on records or from songs that other people played.

I was playing for square dances at 14 and I played on WOW, Fort Wayne, Indiana at 17. Three years later I moved to Hanson, Idaho where I played Saturday nights on KTFI, Twin Falls. Two of my brothers joined me in 1946 as the Shepherd Brothers at WABJ, Adrain [sic], Michigan. In 1948, I played bass fiddle with a 16-piece modern dance band from Tecumseh Products for 2 years. Since then, I have done a lot of studying at home. I am a member of OMFA.”

Ray Shepherd is a remarkable fiddler because he could play both southern tunes and northern. He represents the kind of southern migration to the midwest and Michigan for work, and he obviously picked up fiddling all along the way.