This past weekend brought sad news for the old-time music community. We lost Mac Benford on Saturday and Clyde Davenport on Sunday. I first saw a post on Facebook that Davenport, 98, seemed to be on his deathbed, so it was a bit of shock to learn later that day that Benford, 79, had died.
Benford, of course, was the banjo player in the Highwoods Stringband. According to his website, Benford began playing banjo in 1960, when he was a student at Williams College. He sought out living masters of the time to learn from, including Wade Ward, Kyle Creed, Tom Ashley and Roscoe Holcomb.
Benford moved from the East Coast to California’s Bay Area in 1967 and began his professional performing career with Dr. Humbead’s New Tranquility Stringband and Medicine Show, which contributed a version of "Dubuque" on the 1985 compilation Young Fogies. The band specialized in recreating the old-time music found on 78-rpm records from the 1920s. The band played all up and down the West Coast before it disbanded in 1970. That was the same year that Benford began playing with Walt Koken and Bob Potts in the Fat City Stringband, which later became the nucleus of the Highwoods Stringband.
Benford also recorded a number of solo albums, including the one that I picked up on one of my earliest "Vinyl Hunter" posts.
There is some great footage of Benford on YouTube, including interviews and him playing banjo. You can also check out the Highwoods documentary, Dance All Night, and this wonderful episode of Paul Brown's Across the Blue Ridge radio show for more about Benford and his music.
Davenport was a master old-time fiddler and banjo player from Monticello, Kentucky, as well as a recipient of a 1992 National Heritage Fellowship awarded by the National Endowment for the Arts, the U.S. government's highest honor in the folk and traditional arts.
Davenport recorded a couple albums with fiddler W.L. Gregory in the mid-1970s, Monticello: Tough Mountain Music from Southern Kentucky and Homemade Stuff, which have been reissued by Spring Fed Records and appear to be available through the Middle Tennessee State University website. His solo album Clydeoscope, released in 1986, is available through CDBaby.
The Field Recorders' Collective also has some great offerings to explore Davenport's music, in the form of a two-volume CD set (also available digitally) and a DVD. There are also plenty of YouTube videos to explore, and the Tennessee Arts Commission has some great information about Davenport.
For now we may mourn the passing of these great old-time musicians, but we can rest assured that they will live on in the music that we play.
[Editor's note: Photos sourced from macbenford.com and arts.gov.]
Benford moved from the East Coast to California’s Bay Area in 1967 and began his professional performing career with Dr. Humbead’s New Tranquility Stringband and Medicine Show, which contributed a version of "Dubuque" on the 1985 compilation Young Fogies. The band specialized in recreating the old-time music found on 78-rpm records from the 1920s. The band played all up and down the West Coast before it disbanded in 1970. That was the same year that Benford began playing with Walt Koken and Bob Potts in the Fat City Stringband, which later became the nucleus of the Highwoods Stringband.
Benford also recorded a number of solo albums, including the one that I picked up on one of my earliest "Vinyl Hunter" posts.
There is some great footage of Benford on YouTube, including interviews and him playing banjo. You can also check out the Highwoods documentary, Dance All Night, and this wonderful episode of Paul Brown's Across the Blue Ridge radio show for more about Benford and his music.
Davenport recorded a couple albums with fiddler W.L. Gregory in the mid-1970s, Monticello: Tough Mountain Music from Southern Kentucky and Homemade Stuff, which have been reissued by Spring Fed Records and appear to be available through the Middle Tennessee State University website. His solo album Clydeoscope, released in 1986, is available through CDBaby.
The Field Recorders' Collective also has some great offerings to explore Davenport's music, in the form of a two-volume CD set (also available digitally) and a DVD. There are also plenty of YouTube videos to explore, and the Tennessee Arts Commission has some great information about Davenport.
For now we may mourn the passing of these great old-time musicians, but we can rest assured that they will live on in the music that we play.
[Editor's note: Photos sourced from macbenford.com and arts.gov.]
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