Deral's Background

I was born on July 17 1935 near Purcell Oklahoma.  We lived there for a short time, then we moved to the Union Springs community just North of Pauls Valley Oklahoma.  We lived there until I was three.  Then we moved to a farm located near Wayne Oklahoma. It was a 40 acre farm on which we lived from 1939 till 1954.  Daddy was a share cropper and we didn't have a lot of things that other folks had, because there was not a lot of money to be made from a 40 acre farm.  We raised chickens and always had a couple milk cows. We also raise a couple hogs each year to be butchered for meat in the fall after it frosted. Along with our chickens, we lived off our garden produce through the summer, and what few groceries we could buy with the money we got from selling the cream and eggs.

I started to Wayne School in 1941.  I remember where we were when we heard about Pearl Harbor.  We had go to St. Louis Oklahoma to visit with dad's brother (uncle Ivra), and he told us he had heard the news on his radio.
We had just bought our first radio.  It was battery operated.  I remember some of the radio programs we would listen to.  Gene Autry, The Grand Ole Opry, Jack Benny, Fibber MaGee and Molly, George Burns and Gracie Allen, Jack Benny, Superman, Captin Midnight, The Long Ranger and many others.

When we moved on to the farm near Wayne we lived in a two room shack.  When it rained water would drip from the ceiling.  Every time it rained it would spring a new leak, and we would have to employ a new can or pot to catch the water.  Our land lord wouldn't fix it.  In 1947 mother's brother (Uncle Allen) bought the place from our landlord, and became our new landlord.  In 1949 they tore down the old house and built a new one.  We had to live outside for about 2 months, but it was in the summer so it wasn't that bad.

I learned to work hard at an early age.  I was helping with the chores such as bringing in kindling and coal for our pot bellied stove by the age of 9 or 10.  Helping with the milking, feeding the cows and slopping the hogs, and feeding the chickens. In the spring and early summer there was always something to do:  hoe corn, chop cotton, help gather the garden goodies and haul water. Then at harvest time:  gather the corn, pick the cotton, cut the kafercorn, rake and bale the hay.  When I graduated in 1953 I had had enough of farm life, so went to the city to seek my fame and fortune. When I was 12 years old I got my first job in the broomcorn.  I was water jack.  I had to carry water around on a platform mounted to the back of our farm tractor.  My job was to make sure everyone got plenty of water.  From that time on until I graduated from Highschool, my summer job was working in the broomcorn. 

I came from a musical family (my mother's side anyway).  My mother loved to sing and she taught me and Dean (my sister) the appreciation of music.  In her early days she played the organ.  All of her brothers and sister were good singers.  When I was about 12 years old mom and dad  bought me an old Gene Autry guitar from my cousin Otis West.  It's neck was so warped that you couldn't tune it, much less play it. I was inspired to learn to play a guitar and sing by my cousin Duane West.  He was and still is a good singer and guitar picker.  My sister Dean graduated from Wayne High School in 1950 and went to work in Ada.  Soon after that she bought me my first good guitar.  It was a Sears Silvertone arched top guitar.  That is the guitar I learned to play on.  By the time I got my first guitar Duane had gone into the armed services, but I had a good friend by the name of Marion Clagg who played the guitar and he taught me much of what I learned along with a handy dandy $1.98 guitar book that I ordered.  It was guaranteed to have you playing in no time, and I was strumming soon after. 

I went to work at Tinker Air Force Base in 1956 and retired in 1990.  I was a computer programmer. 

In 1960 I married Towand Penner.  We had a very happy marriage and life together for forty-four years.  We have two wonderful daughters.  Delores and Juanita.  They are married and have good families.  Delores has a good husband and  two children, and is a proud grandparent of two lovely grandchildren.  Juanita has a lovely family and is living in Oregon. She has two wonderful sons and a good husband.

Towanda had breast cancer and died in 2004 at the age of 62.  She fought the disease for about 18 months.  She had a mastectomy in late  2002.  She had treatments and was pronounced cancer free, but it came back and took her life.

Oteka and I started dating about 2 months after Towand passed away and were married on the 23rd of April this year (2005).

Deral's Hobbies

I have been playing the guitar since I was about 15 years old.  In high school I was drafted  by Bill Oliver the FFA teacher, to sing a song on the radio.  I was not a member of FFA but Bill asked me if I would do that for him.  They had a 15 minute program on KNOR Norman about FFA and he asked me to sing a song on the program.  I did and that was my first radio experience.
 I joined the 4-H club so I could participate in the county talent contest.  I remember I sang the song "Kaliga" and won first place. After my junior year I took my guitar and boarded a bus at the highway, about a quarter of a mile from our house, and went to Oklahoma City.  They were auditioning talent at WKY TV for a national hookup to the Ozark Jubilee in Springfield Mo. I was scared to death.  That was the first time I had ventured to OKC by myself.  I had to depend on the people to help me get around.  After arriving at the bus station, I got a cab to WKY TV that was a long ways.  Imagine what that would cost today.  I thank it was about two dollars then. I auditioned for Bruce Palmer and was told I was not quite ready for prime TV.  That was a disappointment, so I went back home. No TV career for me.
While in my sophomore and junior year I played guitar with a friend Marion Clagg.  He started playing a while before I did.  And I learned quite a lot from him.  It was long about that time, sometime in 1952 I met Hubert York who played a mandolin, and we all played together occasionally.   Our neighbors the Buchanans had a nephew, Junior Maynord  that was a musician and Marion and I got together with him once or twice.  When I lived on the farm we had no transportation so I had to depend on other people for transportation.
Our neighbors the Cunninghams were all musically inclined and we would get together with them ever so often and sing and play gospel songs.  Their girls, Jewel, Mildred and Emma Faye All attended the Stamps School Of Music in Texas every year.  So they were all accomplished musicians.
Marion joined the navy in our senior year, and I didn't have a pickin' buddy, however I played during  some assemblies and during the lunch hour my senior year. We would have two or three other singers like Wyman Thompson and Barbara Willingham that would usually sing with us on the lunch hour, and sometimes we would have several spectators. I would play and sing for anyone who would listen.
Our classes project for the junior year, at the annual Halloween carnival was a  Hillbilly show. Marion and I along with Barbara, Wyman, Barbara's dad and uncle. Jerry Craighead had a steel guitar that he tried to play, but he never did learn it. We had a lot of fun, and raised quit a bit of money.
I was approached by our chorus director Mrs. Tudor to sing at our graduation while she accompanied me on the piano with out my guitar.  I turned her down.  I should have done it.
After graduating from high school,  I auditioned for the local talent program on KLPR radio, in OKC, and played two or three times there.  Hubert played with me once and another boy named James, who played an electric guitar. I was living in OKC at the time with my aunt and uncle.
I played on the Uncle Willy Shows and on the Furniture Center Jamboree.  I teamed up with a guy by the name of Charlie Drake, who had a friend by the name of Floyd Andrewes who got to be on the Grand Ole Opry sometime when it came to town.  He arranged an audition for me and Charlie, and we got to be on the next Grand Ole Opry Show when it came to town.  We had just recorded two sides for Huseeko records and plugged our record on the show, and also backed Floyd. Our recording was a big flop as well as the recording company.  Floyd was on the same label.
In 1959 I took a trip to Nashville, where I appeared on the Ernest Tubb Record Shop Show. It was hosted by the Wilburn Brothers, and Doyle Wilburn let me play his guitar on my song.
I was playing in Guthrie at the Avon Ballroom along with Emit Coburn and Carl Bishop and other pick up members when I got married in 1960.
 I quit playing all together, until I met Don Wilder.  We were both working at Tinker on the Graveyard shift.  We started talking about music, and first thing you know we were standing around the collator singing country songs.
We harmonized well together, and played together for about 19 years and he died.  We were on the Jack Beasley Saturday night show.  It was hosted by Tim Holt. We would pick and sing anywhere people wanted us to.  This is when we met Leroy Wood, who plays the steel guitar.
Don's cousin Paul Shafer played the guitar and sometimes the bass guitar.  We would play a somebody's house one night about every week, either at mine, Don's, L. D. Baker, or Leroy's.
L. D. and his family like to hear us play.  L. D. played the mandolin back then.  Since then he has become a very proficient bass player.  He played with us not too long ago.
After Don passed away, I did not touch my guitar for several months.  Duane West my cousin came some time after that.  We had always gotten together and played, when he came for a visit. He lived in Wyoming at the time.  I was so rusty I could hardly play.  He was the main reason for me to start playing in the first place,and he inspired me to start playing again.
When I retired in 1990 we formed a little group we named the Country Cousins. The group originally consisted of me and Duane.  He had retired in Wyoming and moved back here in 1991. Then we picked up a harmonica player by the name of Homer Simmons, and a bass player, Curtis Wilson.  His wife Wilma also played and sing with us.  Then Jim Duggins played with us occasionlly. Jim is a pharmacist but he was off on one day of the week when we played. We started playing one nursing home.  The word got out and before too long we were playing four nursing homes and four senior citizens, and having a ball. Homer and Dean both died and that broke up our group.

We have reorganized and are currently playing three nursing homes and one senior citizens. We call ourselves "The New Country Cousins": Our group consists of Janie Bennett (Oteka's sister) keyboard and vocal, James Frame on bass guitar and vocal, Marvin Sullivan on Steel guitar, George Graham on guitar and vocals, Oteka Clour vocals and harmony, and me Deral Clour on lead guitar, vocals and harmony on vocals.  Oteka has been singing with me since we started dating in October of 2004.  We do duets.
We play with other people at Wannette Oklahoma Senior Citizens Center on the 1st and 3rd Saturday night.  Jack Moore, Veral, Gail Keese, Delta and sometimes Jack's daughter Sandy Sheppard also play at Wannette.   Denny Davenport plays the banjo and sings with us. 
We have a lot of fun where ever we play.

On January 18th 2008 we were guests on the Hennypin Hayride Show in Hennypin Oklahoma.  We met a lot of great people and had a wonderful time.
Thank you Bob for the invatation.