William Hamilton Stepp was born at Proctor, Lee County,

Kentucky in 1875, and moved shortly after 1900

to Magoffin County, settling near Salyersville.

At this time, Magoffin had several outstanding

fiddlers of the old style and it is possible that Stepp

learned from this tradition rather than from

his native county's.

The oldest known fiddler of the area was Patrick Risner,

born in Magoffin County in 1857. Risner was the mentor of

Willie Fletcher and John Salyer, contemporaries of Stepp

who also shared very similar repertoires. As Stepp and

Salyer were good friends, it is natural to assume that

they would have learned from one another.

In later years, Stepp left his family and died in 1947,

in Knox County, Indiana.

A handful of the tunes Stepp recorded for the

Archive of Folk Song, Library of Congress,

are included on American Fiddle Tunes

(Rounder) and

The Music of Kentucky,

volume 1 (Yazoo).

 Diane Montgomery Parsons