Clyde: Nobody ever showed me anything or I never listened to nothing to learn how to play anything.
Jeff: But you must have got your tunes from somewhere.
Clyde: Just like I said, I could hear a tune, hear a man play a tune, and I'd have it. I didn't want to hear it no more. It just stayed with me, you see. When I was just a little fellow, long before I played my head was full of tunes; heard so many, you know. Full of tunes that never did leave my head. Now I can't learn one. That's the difference, see. I didn't want to hear it but one time.
One thing you don't hear CLYDE DAVENPORT play is BLUEGRASS. He considers himself strictly a practitioner of OLD-TIME FIDDLING. In the past fifteen years collectors have recorded Clyde playing more than 150 fiddle tunes. Add to that about 50 banjo tunes and Clyde has one of the largest repertoires among current old-time fiddlers, perhaps the largest. The tunes he learned from his father comprise about 20% and represent a local tradition; many of them are rare, and about 15 are played by Clyde alone.