ABSTRACT
By 1926, the success of the Skillet Lickers was proving to America’s record companies that the hard-driving north Georgia fiddle band sound could be a commercial commodity. All kinds of string bands paraded through the studios in the late 1920s, each seeking a piece of the Skillet Lickers’ action, and many bearing wild, extravagant names like Dr. Smith’s Champion Hoss Hair Pullers, Seven Foot Dilly and His Dill Pickles, and the West Virginia Snake Hunters. Many of these groups made a handful of records and then drifted back into obscurity. One that did not, though, was an outfit from Gordon County, Georgia, called the Georgia Yellow Hammers. Unlike many other bands, the Yellow Hammers generated a distinct style of music that was uniquely their own, and they recorded extensively and successfully.
