Clyde Davenport (1921- ) was raised on a mountain farm near the Tennessee line around Mt. Pisgah, the son of William Davenport and Lucy Boston Davenport. Both Clyde’s grandfather, Francis Davenport, and his father, Will, played fiddle. Clyde played clawhammer-style banjo at home for his own amusement, and learned most of his fiddle tunes from old men born before the Civil War. As a youngster, on many weekends he would walk many miles into town to hear Dick Burnett and Leonard Rutherford play fiddle and banjo on the Monticello courthouse steps. Although neither his father nor anyone else showed him how to play, he was a careful observer and always endeavored to get a clear tone and a smooth fiddle sound. – Ray Alden
