It's no secret that Kentucky carries a rich musical tradition.

Our next story exemplifies this as we meet Don and Grace Rogers, who are keeping alive a musical heritage that stretches back in the family for more than a century.

[music playing] Born in the late 1800s, the Rogers siblings were all gifted and well-seasoned musicians.

This was not unique in the family, as the siblings grew up surrounded by music, guided by their grandfather, Isaac Rogers, a master of old-time singing.

As the years passed, the Rogers brothers came together to play music on their own.

They were known as the Kentucky String Ticklers.

Four brothers that played together mostly, my grandfather, Charlie, Silas, the bandleader and fiddle player, Bryant Rogers, who played bass, and then their brother, Roy, who also played with them occasionally.

He played mandolin.

Apparently, they started playing music when they were kids in Estill County, and played a lot of just traditional old Appalachian fiddle and banjo, fiddle and guitar music.

They moved to Winchester in their adulthood and began their musical careers.

This was the very early days of records, and it was the very early days of radio.

So, they were hearing in the communities, hearing new influences.

They didn't have any kind of label at all that they would put on their music.

If they heard a blues tune or a jazz tune or whatever, they would play it, especially if they were playing gigs.

They're going to play what people want to hear, and they're going to make it as exciting as they can for themselves and whoever's around.

They also played on some early live radio shows too, in Lexington and Cincinnati.

It's been interesting unraveling what that band was, but you have to understand a little bit about how early records were made in the ‘20s and '30s.

Record labels really were nothing like they are now.

Often they were, like in this case, this was a furniture store in Richmond, Indiana.

I think they made pianos there, and it was the Gennett Company.

They connected with a guy named Asa Martin, who was a talent scout for the Gennett Record Company.

He also had a radio show where they would sometimes have a band name like the Kentucky String Ticklers, and it was almost like the brand name of the Radio Hour.

They would bring in a rotating cast of band members.

Just playing whatever people wanted to hear in the early days of radio.

The Rogers family made a living with their music through the Depression.

They were good enough musicians, and they were well enough known that they could travel around through Central and East Kentucky and play enough music to get by on.

The Rogers brothers continued to be successful through the 1950s, playing shows across the region, including a popular stint playing for tourists at the Natural Bridge.

Silas had the most successful career, but Charlie also cemented his legacy with his song, Rocky Road Blues, which was covered by Bill Monroe, brought to him by the banjo legend, Stringbean, who played music and even lived with the Rogers family before joining Monroe's band.

Meanwhile, another musician in the family was making a name for herself.

Their sister, Arizona, or Zone Rogers, was also carving out her musical legacy.

My great-aunt Zone, who was a sister to Silas Rogers and my grandfather, also played music.

She played music in the bars in Cincinnati back in those days in the ‘20s and '30s.

She was really one of the only women playing in that family at the time.

She really matched their rowdiness and excitement and grittiness with her soulful playing.

[music playing] The sound would soon find its way to another generation, carried on by Charlie's son, Donnie, who became enamored with the family legacy and started playing music himself as an adult.

He started playing in a group that included some local musicians called the Kentucky Clodhoppers.

My dad played mandolin and sang in that band.

We recently got that record out here at the house and listened to it, and it's an incredible record of legitimate old Central Kentucky music.

It's wonderful stuff.

Donnie, bless his heart, is one of those people just all about family history and local history.

He knew everything, and he was proud of it.

He had all these old photographs, and he could just talk on and on and on and just tell you stories about the Rogers family.

The thing about the stories that my dad told that really captured my imagination was that he always had these elements of his family that came from poor backgrounds that didn't have a lot of opportunities, but were able to shape their own lives and their own happiness and their own excitement by playing music and by sharing their music with other people and ending up in lots of different scenarios where they were admired for their music.

They were also excited by it themselves.

I don't know, something about that really struck a chord with me.

[Don singing] Well, I'm a Kentuckian, and I'm from the South.

But you won't hear hate coming from my mouth.

Don started writing songs, and I started listening to him, and I thought, Don has really got the gift of songwriting.

He is both an experienced traditional musician and also now an extremely busy commercial musician in the world of Americana and local Kentucky singer-songwriter music.

My daughter, Grace, seems to have been interested in music from a very early age.

I'm extremely impressed at what Grace has done with her music because it airs much more on the rock music side of singer-songwriter music coming out of Kentucky.

[Grace singing] Take this train to the end of the line.

I've been in the pits.

I feel really connected to my ancestors through having a music practice.

I just remember it really dawning on me that if I didn't learn the music, nobody else was just going to do it for me, and it's not going to survive.

Over the years, the philosophy that I have had and that Grace has is to bring the old traditional music of Kentucky into our present approach to playing music.

I think my family has left behind a legacy of artistic excellence.

I think they've also left behind a legacy of willingness to connect and connect across differences.

That's something I see in my dad and in my grandpa.

It's just another really valuable story that has been repeated over and over throughout history like many stories that were happening at the time that my family was making music.

There are lots of great family traditions of music that go deep in Kentucky, and my family was just one of those families.

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