Delia Bell and Bill Grant were the bluegrass duo of Hugo, Oklahoma: Delia Bell (1935–2018) on guitar and lead vocals and Bill Grant (1930–2019) on mandolin and tenor, who sang together from 1959 until 2006 and, with their band the Kiamichi Mountain Boys, gave the southern plains a bluegrass sound of their own. Grant, a Choctaw tribal member raised on a cattle ranch outside Hugo, took up the mandolin after hearing Bill Monroe; Bell, born Frances Leona Nowell in Bonham, Texas, moved to Hugo as a child and grew up singing the Stanley Brothers and Monroe songs she heard on the radio. They became regulars on the Little Dixie Hayride broadcast in 1960, started their own Kiamichi label in the 1970s, and toured England and Ireland eleven times that decade. From 1969 to 2003 Grant ran his bluegrass festival at Salt Creek Park on the family ranch, one of the longest-running festivals in the country, and three Oklahoma governors named him the state's Ambassador of Bluegrass Music.