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1986OHO3.12a---Davenport
Transcriber’s Notes: Words or phrases in found brackets represent unclear or
unintelligible portions of the recording. Brackets are also used to provide the reader with helpful background information about the recording. Underlined text within the transcription represents more than one person speaking at the same time.Additional Transcription Notes: The sound quality of this interview is very
poor. Many of the words and phrases spoken by the Interviewer and Davenport are unintelligible.Interviewer: Okay, I am Marynell Young, and we are at one twenty Boone Street in
Monticello, Kentucky, Wayne County. And I am talking to Clyde Davenport. Clyde, how much time do you devote to your fiddle playing now?�Davenport: Oh, I play about once every month or two, when somebody comes in.Interviewer: Do you play for yourself?
Davenport: No, I don’t play.
Interviewer: You just play on demand, huh?
Davenport: Just demand, somebody wants me to play.
Interviewer: Well, what kind of things then put you in the mood to play? Do
people ask you to do certain pieces?Davenport: People come to hear me play.
Interviewer: How far away do they come from?
Davenport: Well, they come, I don’t know how far from. I don’t know far they do
come. North Carolina, Virginia, West Virginia, Tennessee, Kentucky, Indiana, Ohio. I can’t think of nowhere else.Interviewer: You said you went up to Port Townsend in Washington State.
Davenport: Yeah, I went up there and stayed ten days.
Interviewer: And you were teaching a workshop there.
Davenport: Taught a workshop, and taught a man how to play. That’s about it up
there except my dancing all night until four o’clock in the morning.Interviewer: What kind of dancing?
Davenport: All kinds. Just dancing.
Interviewer: With a caller?
Davenport: Naw, no. I didn’t have no caller. I was dancing with them pretty
girls. [Both laugh]Interviewer: What’s your favorite tune now?
Davenport: Well, I’ll tell you what my favorite tune is. It’s the first tune I
played in my life. I guess that’s the reason [unintelligible]. My favorite, “Sally Goodin.”Interviewer: You can play it in a tuning?
Davenport: No, I play it---
Interviewer: Straight natural G, D, A, E.
Davenport: I play it in A.
Interviewer: What were some other tunes that you learned to play early?
Davenport: Well, now you got me there. I can’t think of them. I don’t know.
Interviewer: Did you play the, who did you learn from?
Davenport: Nobody. Didn’t learn form anybody. Just played. Didn’t have to learn,
see. Interviewer: Well, when was the first time you tried?Davenport: Nobody ever showed me anything, and I never listened to anything to
learn to play. Never showed nothing about it in my life.Interviewer: Were you, how old were you then?�Davenport: I was nine years old.
Interviewer: And where did you get that first fiddle?�Davenport: Well, I made
it. I made it off of a, out of a board out of a white oak tree where they [unintelligible] was rows, covered buildings with. Shaped it out like a fiddle, you know. And put two strings on it. I went to the mountain and cut me a dogwood stick, and went to the barn and big log barn, you know, and caught a mule’s tail [unintelligible] and I got what hair I wanted, and then I started the mule out, and I let back on and pulled the hair out of it and fixed it on that stick and made me a bow. And then I had to go to another mountain where a yellow pine trees grow, and got me a little ball of hard rosin, you know, on the side of the tree to rosin my bow. Started to play.Interviewer: And “Sally Goodin” was the first one you wanted to, that come to you.
Davenport: It was the first one I tried, you see.
Interviewer: It just came to you?
Davenport: Well, I just played it just as quick—
Interviewer: Both parts?
Davenport: All of it.
Interviewer: Just that easy.
Davenport: All, I finally played it all.
Interviewer: Well, I’m jealous. I had to work real hard to learn it.
Davenport: Well, I told you it took a dumb person to do it. [Both laugh].
Interviewer: Okay, what members of your family play music? Your dad---
Davenport: My daddy played, my old, oldest brother played, and my brother
younger than me played. And then my brother just older than me he didn’t ever try to play anything. My youngest brother could play. Course he don’t play now. But he could. There’s four of us boys, and my daddy played there.Interviewer: What was your daddy’s name?
Davenport: William.
Interviewer: William?
Davenport: William.
Interviewer: William Davenport. About when was he born?
Davenport: He was born in eighteen and seventy-six.
Interviewer: Seventy six. Did your grandfather play?�Davenport: Yeah, my
grandfather played. I never did hear him, hear him play. He was old, you know. Well, I might have heared him try to play. He was up ninety year old before I ever [thought much about it].Interviewer: Do you know what his name was?
Davenport: Murray Francis.
Interviewer: Murray Francis Davenport?
Davenport: Mm-hmm.
Interviewer: What about your mother’s father?
Davenport: Francis Murray. I’ll get it right directly. Francis Murray.
Interviewer: Francis Murray---
Davenport: Yeah, yeah.
Interviewer: Davenport.
Davenport: Yeah, and what’d you say?
Interviewer: Your mother’s father, did they play? Those people?
Davenport: You mean my grandpa’s wife’s name? She was a [Parman or Parmain].
Interviewer: [Parmain?]
Davenport: [Zeerelly Parmain].
Interviewer: Oh, that’s a name, isn’t it?
Davenport: Yeah.
Interviewer: [Zeerelly Parmain].
Davenport: Yeah, [Zeerelly Parmain].
Interviewer: Now let’s go to your mother’s side of the family.
Davenport: Well, my mother was Lucy Boston. And she had a brother that plays
fiddle some.Interviewer: She did?
Davenport: Yeah.
Interviewer: What was his name?
Davenport: Jim, James I guess. They called him Jim.
Interviewer: Jim Boston? And did her father play? Jim Boston’s father?
Davenport: If he did I never knowed of it.
Interviewer: So you [unintelligible as Davenport speaks].
Davenport: I just remember seeing him one time when I was little, you know.
Interviewer: Uh-huh.
Davenport: I never had no contact. Just seen him one time when I was just
little. Just barely can remember it.Interviewer: Mm-hmm, mm-hmm. When did you first play out in public? Or have you
only played at home?Davenport: Well, usually when I played I played for myself. That wasn’t too
often. Lots of times on Saturday nights they’d be somebody want to have a little crowd gather in you know and I’d know it, why I’d go on Saturday nights, you know, and play the fiddle all night for them to dance. Only man around for the to play, you know. And I don’t know what I got out of it, but go five miles each way.Interviewer: Are all these, was that around here at Monticello?
Davenport: Yeah, back in the mountains where I was raised you know, back in the
hills about sixteen miles out.Interviewer: Well, when did you move to town?
Davenport: Well, I’ve not lived in town over; I doubt it’s been ten years.
Interviewer: Oh.
Davenport: May have been that long, may have been a little longer. I don’t know
just what year I did move to town. Of course I didn’t stay back in there. Lived in Indiana, got married up there you see. That’s where I got hooked at [unintelligible] myself. [Laughs].Interviewer: Has she been putting up with you all this time?
Davenport: Eh, yeah when she can. And then I, then I moved back here. I didn’t
go back in the mountains. Well I left out of there before I was ever married. Never married til I’s an old man.Interviewer: What do you mean old man?
Davenport: I was twenty-nine.
Interviewer: You were twenty, you were [unintelligible].
Davenport: Twenty-nine, almost thirty when I got married.
Interviewer: You were almost used up.
Davenport: Nah, I wouldn’t say that. [Both laugh]. Then I moved from Indian and
bought me a farm out here at [Barrier] Kentucky. I sold it, and I already had one on [Capple] Creek. And then I bought me one here at [Stop or Stock]. Moved down there. I never did go to [Capple] Creek, and I lived down there [unintelligible]. And then I sold it and went to Tennessee and bought me a truck stop and run it for a while. Sold it out and come back here, and I don’t know where I did buy at. But anyway, I’ve been around a little, you know.Interviewer: Yeah. So you said before when we were talking that you went for
fourteen years---Davenport: Sixteen years.
Interviewer: Sixteen years.
Davenport: Sixteen years.
Interviewer: What was happening during that time that---
Davenport: Not a thing in the world only just hard work.
Interviewer: Uh-huh.
Davenport: Didn’t have the fiddle in the house. Never played the fiddle for
sixteen years. I don’t know how come me to ever get a hold of the fiddle and start up again.Interviewer: Well, how many fiddles do you have now?
Davenport: I’ve got two.
Interviewer: Uh-huh. But you made the blonde one?
Davenport: Yeah that, I give that to my girl. See I’ve made three of my girls
one. And I’ve got one to make one yet. My youngest girl lives at Jamestown, Tennessee.Interviewer: You have three girls?
Davenport: One of my girls now.
Interviewer: You have three girls?�Davenport: Yeah.
Interviewer: And you’ve made each of them a fiddle?
Davenport: I’ve got four girls. I’ve made three of them one. I’ve got the other [unintelligible].
Interviewer: Do they play?
Davenport: No.
Interviewer: You’ve got to fix that some way. You’ve got a lot of good tunes here.
Davenport: They could learn. They’ve not done so. They could learn.
Interviewer: Well, you can’t really say what prompted you to get a fiddle after
sixteen years without one?Davenport: No, don’t know how I got a hold or it or where. Don’t remember
nothing about it.Interviewer: Did you get back with your brother?
Davenport: No.
Interviewer: Are they still playing?
Davenport: No, they, they dead. Already gone.
Interviewer: How many were in your family?
Davenport: They was five of us boys, and ain’t but two us living, me and my
youngest brother. And I’ve got three sisters. They’re all older than us boys. My oldest sister is going on seventy-eight. They are all living and doing well. We brothers died. Well, I had a brother died when he was nine years old, my oldest brother. My next oldest brother he died when he was sixty-three. And the one next to him died when he was fifty-one, and the other one died when he was about forty-nine.Interviewer: Beat that then.
Davenport: Huh?�Interviewer: You beat that record, didn’t you?
Davenport: Yeah, so far I have. My oldest brother was an awful good fiddle
player; well the next one younger than me was pretty good. But they was rough, rougher fiddlers than I am. They was rough, but they could play. What they played was played you know. They’re good. I’ve always smoother. I ain’t smooth like I used to be.Interviewer: Oh, you’re smooth now.
Davenport: Ain’t smooth like I used to be. Just don’t know what’s happened, but
just can’t play smooth [like I used to]. But this is my way of playing. It’s my own style. What I play is my own style. I never try to pattern nobody else. I’ve smart enough to know being a boy like that [unintelligible] get to where I couldn’t play at all, tried to play like everybody. Can’t do that. If you’ve got a style, stay with your style. I never did change mine.Interviewer: Well, you listened to the radio and heard tunes on the radio.
Davenport: No, I didn’t never have no radio back when I was growing up.
Interviewer: Oh you didn’t?�Davenport: No. Didn’t have nothing.
Interviewer: No radio stations around?�Davenport: Wasn’t down here. Down there
wasn’t no radios. If a man had a radio why they’d gather in from miles away to go hear the radio on Saturday night. When they first come out you had to use earphones. Pretty tough, boy, back them days.Interviewer: So you played the tunes that you heard other people playing?
Davenport: Other people playing. I never heared too many of them until I got big
enough where I could get out on my own and go places and stuff like that. I had to walk then.Interviewer: Well let’s see, nineteen twenty one, you didn’t go to World War II
did you?Davenport: I went to World War II.
Interviewer: You did? Where were you?
Davenport: I was in Africa, Sicily, and Italy.
Interviewer: What kind of music did they play over there?
Davenport: Over in Italy they played accordions and mandolin and stuff like that.
Interviewer: Did you develop any tunes from---
Davenport: No, I didn’t try.
Interviewer: You didn’t bring any of that music back with you?
Davenport: No, I didn’t get to hear too much of it. I had something else to do.
Interviewer: Well, a few other things to do. [Both laugh].
Davenport: I had other things to do. I wasn’t interested in it, you know. I
didn’t never [try to learn nothing] in my life expect playing.Interviewer: Well, like for example your tune “Open the Gate and Walk on Through?”
Davenport: Yeah.
Interviewer: Was that a tune that you, that your daddy played?�Davenport: No, no
my daddy didn’t play that. I got that off of a record. Here, it hasn’t been too many year ago a feller gave me a record, and I played it on the record. I just played it is all there was too it. Like I said, there never was no trouble, last few years for me to pick up a tune.Interviewer: You tune your fiddle out of natural tuning and put it in----
Davenport: Yeah, I cross tune. Play a few tunes. Not many.
Interviewer: What do you, when you’re in cross tune, are you in A, E, A, E? You
know what I’m saying?�Davenport: Well, now I don’t. [Both laugh]. I told you I’m dumb. Don’t know about it, just play. I call it the key of A.Interviewer: Uh-huh.
Davenport: I can tune it, you know, the key of D.
Interviewer: What, we’ll do that in a minute.
Davenport: That’s the way I call it, you see. I don’t know nothing about this
other stuff.Interviewer: What do you play in D?�Davenport: Huh?
Interviewer: What do you play in the key of D? When you tune it to D?
Davenport: The cross key?
Interviewer: Mm-hmm.
Davenport: Oh, I can play, I’d have to think on that. [Colored fellow was] I’ll
have to sleep on that. [Both laugh]. “[Zollie’s] Retreat,”Interviewer: Oh!
Davenport: Uh, “Right Snake,” and “Bonaparte’s Retreat” is the only way I ever
heared it played.Interviewer: Mm-hmm. How many parts do you put in when you do “Bonaparte’s?”
Davenport: “Boneparte’s Retreat?”
Interviewer: Mm-hmm
Davenport: I think they’s two.
Interviewer: Do you play any marches?
Davenport: No, if I do I don’t know that they’re marches. [Both laugh.] I may
play them and not know that they’re marches. I told you I didn’t know nothing about it. Just played.Interviewer: Well, that’s part of the beauty of it, isn’t it?
Davenport: Well, that’s the main part of it: just play. If you can play that’s
where you need to go, ain’t it?Interviewer: Yeah.
Davenport: If you’re good on it.
Interviewer: Let’s see, you play some on the banjo too don’t you?
Davenport: Well, I can’t hit the strings since I got my hand crippled up. I got
[unintelligible] sewed back on [my writs and hands] I can’t hit the strings.Interviewer: But you can hold a fiddle bow?�Davenport: Yeah. I drag it straight,
you see. I can’t work my wrist like I used to. It won’t work now.Interviewer: Gives you a nice distinctive bowing style doesn’t it?
Davenport: That’s the reason I couldn’t write my name, you see, with my hand.
Interviewer: Mmm-hmmm.
Davenport: [Unintelligible.]
Interviewer: Do you play the same tunes on the banjo that you play on the fiddle?
Davenport: I can some of them, and I can play some that I don’t play on the fiddle.
Interviewer: We might play some banjo a little later.
Davenport: Well, [my banjo] is one of these old time banjos, and strings is
rusted on them. I’ve got a nice one in there though with no strings on it.Interviewer: Does it have frets on it?
Davenport: Oh yeah.
Interviewer: I’ve seen a fretless one played.
Davenport: Yeah, I have too. I played a fretless banjo.
Interviewer: Did you?
Davenport: [Unintelligible, sound of auto engine in the background] I made one
one time sixteen year old, learned to play on it. I never did know [unintelligible] never did know [where it went to.]Interviewer: What happened to your dad’s fiddle?
Davenport: Ah, my sister’s got it. Did have it last time I knowed of. I had it,
and let my brother have it. He lives in Indiana. Let him have it. And then he gave it to my sister. [Sound of truck driving by]Interviewer: Let’s let that truck go by.
Davenport: I give it to my brother and I reckon he give it to my sister. She’s
still got it. It was a [HOEM]. German fiddle. Cut right there on the back of it, you know. And I had one that was H-O-P-E. HOPE, you know? It was made on the same pattern. Looked just like it and everything. And they was H-O-D-M [sound of automobile going by, Davenport unintelligible] Black, [unintelligible]. He bought it when he was twenty-two year old. He gave two dollars and a half for it. He ordered it, you know. Had to order it then. They didn’t have no music stores back then. Twenty-two year old when he ordered it. He kept it as long as he lived and was still playing it.Interviewer: [Laughs.] Have you played or listened black musicians? Are there
any live around here?Davenport: [Coot Berthum] used to be here. He’s in Indianapolis, Indiana now.
And he was a good fiddler. I’ve heard him play at the courthouse yard. He’s a fiddler. Course you know about [Leonard Rupert, Stick Burnett].Interviewer: I’ve heard an album.
Davenport: He’d stand up here in the courthouse yard [unintelligible] and listen
to them play. Boy, that old Leonard couldn’t do nothing but play a fiddle. It was just like he was [unintelligible].Interviewer: Is that right?�Davenport: Oh that fiddle. Did you never get to hear
him any?Interviewer: Not while he was alive.
Davenport: No, not while he was alive. I know you didn’t. But you ought to hear
him back when he was alive and young, you know. They’d never been a man ever pulled a bow like he could, and there never will be. [Unintelligible]. Ah, there used to be a lot of musicians here in Monticello. There was Harrison Ramsey. He was a fiddle player. [Al Bell] was a fiddle player. [Dick or Nick] Burnett was a fiddle player. Leonard Rufus was a fiddle player. My daddy was a fiddle player. And I could just go on and on if I could think. This town, or this county was full of musicians---Interviewer: Considering—
Davenport: Now they ain’t, there’s none here now.
Interviewer: The percentage of the musicians went down.
Davenport: Yeah.
Interviewer: And the percentage of the people, there are a lot more people
around. You see what I’m saying?Davenport: Yeah, there’s a lot more people now [unintelligible] back in Wayne
County what went to Indiana and Ohio and around the county wouldn’t hold. [laughs]Interviewer: Maybe they had the [leave].
Davenport: [They had to leave to get work]. Now you could [tell me] about my
fiddle. Nobody knows nothing about that.Interviewer: Okay, let’s talk about [perhaps the brand name of a fiddle,
Nicolas]. Where did you get it?�Davenport: I bought it in Indiana, off a feller in Indiana.Interviewer: And you repaired it?
Davenport: I repaired it.
Interviewer: What all did you have to do to it?�Davenport: Well, you see how it
cracked up here?Interviewer: Uh-huh.
Davenport: All them places broke up. Put a piece in here, see? And ease that top
back, and you see here where this was so [unintelligible as Davenport moves away from the microphone] to cut it off of from another neck, put it on made another neck [unintelligible]. It’s so valuable [unintelligible].Interviewer: How old do you think that is?
Davenport: Well, it’s not, there’s lots of fiddles older than this. This here is
a name brand fiddle you see. [Unintelligible].Interviewer: Now what’s that mean when it’s like that?
Davenport: I don’t know what it means [unintelligible].
Interviewer: Oh, and that sits up on the end? I’m beginning to see what you’re saying.
Davenport: Sits up down this way, see?
Interviewer: Uh-huh.
Davenport: And another one runs down this way. It ain’t that wide. [Pretty well
see a lot like that there].Interviewer: Well, it’s a narrow little.
Davenport: Yeah.
Interviewer: Narrow little thing, isn’t it? Flat here.
Davenport: Arched up, just arched up a little in the middle, you see?
Interviewer: They carved it out like that.
Davenport: Yeah. I’ve been [unintelligible] make me one like that. You reckon I
get by with it?�Interviewer: Sure you could. [Davenport laughs]. From what I’ve seen, the other blonde fiddle that you [unintelligible] looking inlay work that you can do anything that wanted to.Davenport: I wish I could. I wouldn’t be a setting here. [laughs].
Interviewer: What was school like for you?
Davenport: Bad. I hated to go to school worse than anything I ever done in my life.
Interviewer: Was it a one room school or?
Davenport: Yeah, one room school, set high up on the hill. I’d walk about two miles.
Interviewer: How many kids were there?
Davenport: Ah, sixty or seventy I guess.
Interviewer: Did you finish through the eighth grade or did you [Interviewer
becomes unintelligible as Davenport begins talking]?Davenport: Nah, I quit. I quit.
Interviewer: You didn’t like it all, huh?�Davenport: No. I quit and went to work.
Interviewer: A lot of people needed to work.
Davenport: Sit there day at a time never look at my book. Oh I hated school so
bad I didn’t get no education.Interviewer: But you can play the fiddle.
Davenport: I can do other things.
Interviewer: You can do many other things.
Davenport: It’s them educated people can’t. Tell you what I wouldn’t do, I
wouldn’t give what I know for [no man’s education]. There’s nothing that I can’t do that I want to do. [sound of automobile].Interviewer: When I saw you last fall down at Berea and you were playing in a
performance situation with Bobby Fulcher, what other, what’s your favorite kind of situation when you are asked out to play at a place like that with an audience or when you go up to Townsend for a workshop. Is that, are those things that you want to keep doing or would you change something about that?Davenport: No I wouldn’t change anything. But the bigger the crowd the better I
like it. I get on stage and never make a mistake.Interviewer: I noticed that.
Davenport: I can sit down and here play [unintelligible] somebody wants to hear
them and make all kinds of them.Interviewer: Well, you can make all the mistakes you want to. You play for a
long time and I don’t hear them.Davenport: Yeah, I’ve played for [care for that].
Interviewer: [Laughs]. Let’s see, you’ve got a grandson and some daughters here,
do you think any of them would learn to play?Davenport: No, I don’t. I’ve got, I’ve got three granddaughters and two grandsons.
Interviewer: What would it take to entice them to learn?
Davenport: Both of my grandsons have got a fiddle. I give them a fiddle a piece.
I ought to give them to the girls I guess because [they’re not learning].Interviewer: They might. You might try that. That might make the boys jealous of
you, turn around give you, tell them how you want to give that fiddle over to the girls.Davenport: [Unintelligible] ten year old both of them.
Interviewer: Good time to learn, since you were nine.
Davenport: Yeah, I could have played if I’d had something to play on I was five
year old [sound of wind hitting the microphone].Interviewer: You think it’s you’re a good listener?
Davenport: I had a good ear on me.
Interviewer: Good memory?
Davenport: Yeah, had a good ear on me. Boy it just stayed with me
[unintelligible]. Now I can’t learn one.Interviewer: Why don’t you play one right here on the end of this?
Davenport: What would you like to hear?�Interviewer: I think you’ve got room to
play a little tune right here on the end and then we’ll flip it over and----Davenport: Hear the first one I ever heard in my life?�Interviewer: Yeah, let’s
hear the first one you ever played in your life? What is it going to be?Davenport: The first one I ever—
Interviewer: “Sally Goodin?”
Davenport: Yeah.
[
1:00 --- 2:00Plays “Sally Goodin.”]Interviewer: That’s pretty. That’s real pretty.
[
3:00End of recording].��PAGE �
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©Kentucky Oral History Commission Kentucky Historical Society 4:00