Arthur Kyle Davis was the ballad scholar at the University of Virginia under whom Paul Clayton did his Masters. Paul worked at transcribing the texts of the songs in the archive of the Virginia Folklore Society. It was through this association that Paul found the fragment that he expanded with words of his own. Whether he got the fragment directly from Davis or from hearing it in the Archive he was reluctant to say. I actually asked him about it when he visited us while we were still living in Vermont. I think he may have been worried about (legal?) repercussions concerning his use of the original fragment. Billy Grammer made his quite popular recording of the song for Monument Records. When the Monument honchos learned that the song was mostly Paul's creation, they offered him a recording of his own on their label. It had long been Paul's dream to make a "commercial" recording, so that's where you can hear Paul Clayton backed by the Jordanaires!

Sandy