Harry Kiker

This young Georgia fellow had about zero desire for old-time country music until his sister, Opal, got associated with a tall fellow from the name of John Dilleshaw. Not merely do Dilleshaw (or Dilly) prefer to provide his acoustic guitar around for passionate serenades, he’d actually make his entire music group tag along to supply a wooing groove. Quickly youthful Harry was picking right up fiddle suggestions from whomever been in the music group that week, which was a north Georgia exact carbon copy of the Juilliard College of Music as Dilleshaw’s rings included players such as for example Lowe Stokes and Ahaz Grey, fiddle competition champions and hotshot players all. As an associate of Dilly & His Dill Pickles at age group 18, Kiker experienced an opportunity to perform at unending square dances as well as rowdier get-togethers referred to as “entertainments” or “frolics.” He is at on a lot of his brother-in-law’s traditional old-time recording classes for Brunswick and OKeh in the past due ’20s and early ’30s, some carried out under the humiliating music group name of Seven Feet Dilly & His Sizzling Pickles. Stunt fiddlers such as for example Grey or Joe Dark brown were presented on showy figures or comic skits, but Kiker was among the primary bandmembers who documented numbers such as for example “Bust Down Stomp” and “Georgia Stomp.” He shows up on a few of these recordings as Costs Kiker. Dilleshaw offered in the first ’40s and Kiker preserved his participation with several Dilly music group sidemen, most of whom acquired passed on with the past due ’60s. In 2001, Kiker was still healthful more than enough to fiddle, confining the majority of his playing to his very own kitchen where he frequently plays with a pal who’s an ex-violinist in the Atlanta Symphony.