Thursday, March 5, 2009

Skillet Lickers - Skillet Lickers


Artist: Skillet Lickers
Genre: Bluegrass/Skit
Album: S/T

Most people on Accelerated Evolution know that I grew up on blugrass and still have a huge soft spot in my heart for the all things bluegrass. Shit, I have a wheatland music festival sticker on the back of my jeep.

When Gid Tanner teamed up with blind guitarist Riley Puckett and signed to Columbia in 1924, they created the label's earliest so-called "hillbilly" recording. Gid Tanner formed The Skillet Lickers in 1926. the first line-up was Gid Tanner, Riley Puckett, Clayton McMichen and Fate Norris. Between 1926 and 1931 they recorded 88 sides for Columbia. Eighty-two of these were commercially issued. Later members were Lowe Stokes, Bert Layne, Hoke Rice, Arthur Tanner and Hoyt "Slim" Bryant. Their best-selling single was "Down Yonder", a hillbilly breakdown, in 1934 on RCA Victor. They disbanded in 1931, but reformed for occasional recordings after a couple of years with a changing line-up. "Back Up and Push" was another well-known recording. The Skillet Lickers, together with fellow North Georgians Fiddlin' John Carson and the Georgia Yellow Hammers, made Atlanta and North Georgia an early center of old-time stringband music, especially the hard-driving fiddle-based style employed by each of these performers.

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