He was ‘the real deal’

Courtesy Rick Romancito

Steel guitarist Leonard Kasza is shown performing with Kim Treiber at Black Mesa Winery.

The signature voice of classic country-western music is the steel guitar. And, the one thing the world is missing right now is one less master of that instrument, Leonard Kasza.

This beloved artist and musician died in Taos on Aug. 9 at the age of 86 of an abdominal aneurysm.

His wife, Katherine, to whom he’d been married for 62 years, said his final words to her were, “I love you.” And, when he was gone, she said his years just melted away, his features relaxed to reveal a man finally at peace.

“He was a great man,” Kim Treiber commented on social media. Kasza had played for many years with her Taos band, Kim and the Caballeros. “Made our band legit. The real deal!” Local art gallery owner and leader of western swing band Swing Dusters, Robert Parsons, said he admired Kasza for his skill and solid musicianship. He particularly recalled one of his favorite pieces of advice Kasza would offer to new players: “You may not need to practice, but we need to practice with you.”

“Leonard did his homework,” Parsons said.

Kasza was born April 11, 1937 in Wiley, Colo. to farmers Paul and Gertrude Kasza.

According to “Back When I Was Just a Kid,” a memoir he wrote about his first 18 years, Kasza talked about his earliest interest in music. “I’m not sure just when the music bug hit me,” he wrote, “but I think I must have been about 13 or 14 years old. I decided that I really wanted to play country music and that a guitar would be the thing to start on.”

Katherine said in a recent interview that her husband had never really learned to read music. He was, however, a perfectionist who had the ability to focus on something until he learned it by heart. “He taught himself to play the dobro and became a master of the instrument, playing and recording with bluegrass legends of his time,” his online obituary recounts. In 1958, he acquired his first pedal steel guitar.

As a youth, his musical turning point was a 1952 meeting with Chet Calcote. He was a Colorado country music star, operating under the name of Chet Lee. That led to Kasza performing on a radio show called the “KLMR Shindig,” which was broadcast out of Lamar, Colo. Soon, he was playing mandolin and singing with a house band called the Arkansas Valley Wranglers. At about the time, Kasza was given some sage advice to ditch the mandolin and concentrate on the steel guitar.

“I regularly performed during a Saturday evening country music show on KLMR radio in Lamar,” said Kasza in an article about the Wranglers in “Elk Bugles: The Little Known Music History on Colorado” posted online in 2010. “I was only 14 or 15, and wasn’t old enough to drive yet,” he said, “so my mom would take me to the radio station.” The Wranglers performed at nearly every available venue in the region, including the Spot 50 Tavern in La Junta, and the Eagles Club in Lamar.

After he graduated from high school in 1955, he joined the U.S. Army and was honorably discharged in 1958. He later met and married Katherine Conty on Dec. 2, 1961 after returning to Colorado.

Kasza’s ability to focus and analyze any problem was what also led him to become a computer analysis programmer for the Veterans Administration (his kids remember their dad making Christmas trees out of computer punch cards).

In 1964, while they lived in Austin, Texas, Leonard began to concentrate on his music and also a growing interest in art. His sons Daniel, 59, and Bill, 60, marveled at their father’s attention to detail in anything he did. His art was just as meticulous. At one point, he was even given the People’s Choice Award at the Taos Fall Arts Festival after the couple retired here in 1995.

Kasza has been involved with a number of other recording projects, journalist Ariana Kramer wrote for the Taos News in 2015. He played on “Aloha from Santa Fe” with the Santa Fe band Poi White Trash with Michael Morrow on Hawaiian slack key guitar, Phil Scollard on percussion and Jack Kotz. In 2007, at the age of 70, Kasza recorded a reunion CD with Vic Clay and Chet Calcote of the Ark Valley Wranglers. They recorded the CD at Clay’s studio in Nashville.

In the liner notes of his album, “Thistledown: Leonard Kasza and his Real Steel Guitar,” Kasza wrote, “During the 55-plus years that I have been playing music, I have assumed the role of ‘enhancer,’ with the objective of making the music of others sound better. This seldom presents the opportunity to play music that defines me, so I learn the songs I like and play them for my own enjoyment. I finally came to realize that unless I recorded this music it would soon be gone like thistledown in the wind.”

Kramer wrote that Kasza spent his first years in Taos at home practicing and playing with local duo, Vito y Alan. Then, around 2006, he fell in with Kim and the Caballeros. “I had a lot of real neat experiences playing with that band,” Kasza told the Taos News. “We worked in a movie one time, which was interesting.” Kasza recounted how he played the part of a piano player in “Did You Hear About The Morgans?” (2009). Another highlight was recording a live album at the Sagebrush Inn.

Kasza is survived by his wife, Katherine, sister Berna Rehyer of Rocky Ford, Colo., son William and wife Vangie of Buda, Texas, son Daniel of Hayden, Ind., a daughter, eight grandchildren, eight great-grandchildren, and numerous nephews and nieces. He is preceded in death by his parents, sister Marge Shoaf, and brother Ed Kasza.

In 2017, Kasza decided to retire from music. In a Taos News story, he was asked what he would like to say to his local fans. He said, “Thank you for coming out to hear me play, and all the support you’ve given.”

The family says a celebration of his life is planned at a date yet to be announced.

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