The old time musical tradition began for Clint Howard when he was around 6, listening to his mother sing a line from a hymn or ballad. She would give him the pitch of the part he was to sing and by changing the pitch, she taught him all parts of the songs she had learned from her family. That continued on as he got older and when Howard would come home late from town he’d “ go on in the house and my mother’d be in the bed, her and my dad, and she wasn’t asleep.  It didn’t make any difference what time of the night that was, me and her would go to singing, singing songs out of the song book or gospel songs, or just whatever.  Me and her’d sing sometimes to one or two o’clock in the morning”. Howard stills sings lead, bass, baritone, tenor and falsetto tenor and credits his mother for developing the enormous power and range of his voice.

His Father bought him a guitar when he turned 11. After teaching himself to play the guitar, he spent many hours singing and picking and almost a decade later he began to perform regularly. But it was not until the early 1960’s when Howard first came to the attention of folks outside his home region of NE Tennessee. 

The oft told tale of Howard, Clarence "Tom" Ashley, and Fred Price’s meeting with Ralph Rinzler at the Union Grove, NC Fiddler’s Convention in 1960 led to Howard traveling and recording with Price, Doc Watson and others, making friends and developing fans in all parts of the country.  

In the early 60’s, playing with  Ashley, Price and Watson at Carnegie Hall and the Newport Folk Festival, among other venues, Clint was the front man for the group, telling jokes and introducing songs with a natural ease that audiences loved. Two albums made at that time Old-Time Music at Clarence Ashley's and Old Timey Concert are still popular today.

In the 70’s he formed a band called Clint Howard, Fred Price & Sons, which became well known as a great mountain music band. They had show dates at the Smithsonian, Washington, DC, the 1982 World’s Fair in Knoxville and the National Folk Festival Wolf Trap Farm Park in Vienna, VA. They traveled with a tour that had performances in 14 different cities sponsored by The Gabier Folklore Society.

In the late 1980’s, with Fred Price’s passing, and having reared a family and having 6 grandchildren, Howard formed a new band called Clint Howard and the Blue Ridge Mountain Boys. The band featured Clarence Howard, Dan Isaacs, Doug Warden and others. During this time, he wrote several songs and recorded them, along with some old favorites, on the album Way Down in My Cabin Home, released by Old Homestead Record Label in 1987.

When an old time collection is compiled, Clint Howard’s singing and guitar playing are often included on the album (see discography).  His rendition of Maggie Walker Blues (a variant of "The Girl I Left Behind" song family) is still considered one of the best.In 1963, Bob Dylan used the tune for his own unreleased "Long Time Gone," a song which also shared parts of the imagery (most notably the "fickle girl" image), making the Clint Howard version a rather likely folksong influence/source for Dylan's "original".
 

He has passed on the vocal tradition to his family, first with his son, Clarence who has been listening to his dad’s music since he was 6 years old and got his first guitar. “The first song he ever taught me was Tom Dooley and I’ve been picking and singing with him ever since”. Clarence plays lead guitar and sings bass, baritone, lead and tenor in the band. Howard started teaching Garet, his 19-year-old grandson, to sing at the age of 6 riding around in his truck.  Garet sings and plays banjo in the band when he can get away from school and his job in Radford, VA. His banjo picking has been compared to Earl Scruggs, but Garet insists “I just try to pick a little bit. I’m no professional, that’s for sure”. Continuing the family tradition, Howard recently gave a French harp to his 3-year-old great grandson, Hank. Jack Proffitt, an honorary member of the Howard family and bass player and singer in the band is “thankful for the opportunity to play with Clint.  He has opened doors for me that I would never have walked through on my own.  I just like the music and we need to carry it on.”

He has influenced musicians as far away as Switzerland (the Kruger Brothers) and Wayne Henderson drove out of his way to come and see Clint, when he heard him playing live on a VA radio station. 

Howard has not only sung the old-time tunes since childhood, he has also written songs that are sung by other musicians today. Three of these songs, Light in the Window, Looking Off Down the Road, and the Shipyard Blues, could just as easily have been sung in the 1930’s as in the 21^st century.  Light in the Window, a song about Howard's mother, is included in the live album, Clint Howard Band Live Times 2. The compact disc is available through Cdbaby where you can listen to clips from the album.

Early in 2004 he volunteered his time and talent one hour per week for seven weeks to pass on the old time music to students at the Optional High School in Johnson County, TN.  These students are ‘at risk’ young people who get little or no extra curricular classes.  His love of the music is contagious and the compact disc, Passing It On,  which was made from some of those classes shows how good he is at passing it on.

2004 was a busy year for Clint Howard, now 74 years old. He played on the Traditional Stage at Merlefest where he has played with Doc Watson since Merlefest began in 1988. He also played at Doc Days, Studio One at East Tennessee State University’s public radio station WETS, the Down Home in Johnson City, Butler Days, The Rex Theater, Galax, VA, the Carolina in the Fall concert and the Cranberry Festival in Shady Valley, TN.  A seminar he presented in December 2004 was placed into the East Tennessee State University Appalachian Archives.  To end the year he played again at the Down Home for the East Tennessee State University bluegrass and old time students. In between, he plays for friend’s funerals, at church sings, and for local and regional politicians

Fame and fortune are not the reasons Clint Howard sings and plays old time music. He has farmed his land, raised his cattle and worked as a welder and school bus driver to support his family while making albums and touring. He speaks often of his gratitude for his wife, Betty, who took care of the farm and the children while he was in California and New York with Fred Price and Doc Watson. Howard performs the same whether in Carnegie Hall, the community center in Mountain City, or for the funeral of an old friend. He plays for the love and traditions of these old songs and is one of a handful of living original old time musicians. As one of his New York fans put it in 1996, “The humble and unassuming attitude you showed me gave me a feeling of warmth and love that other performers don’t seem to give to their fans. The historical importance of your work in preserving the traditional songs and tunes cannot be measured. I can only thank you for sharing your talents with us that we might understand the wonderful way of life that engendered such traditions.”

Clint Howard is as real and true as the old-time music he plays and loves.