Gid Tanner

Infobox musical artist
Name = Gid Tanner


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Background = Fiddler
Birth_name = James Gideon Tanner
Alias = "Gid"
Born = June 6, 1885
Died = death date and age|1960|5|13|1885|6|6
Origin = Thomas Bridge, Georgia, USA
Instrument = Fiddle
Genre = Country
Occupation = Country artist
Years_active = 1920s – 1930s
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Notable_instruments = Fiddle

James Gideon Tanner (b. June 6, 1885 Thomas Bridge near Monroe, Georgia, d. May 13, 1960 Dacula, Georgia) was an American old time fiddler and one of the earliest stars of what would come to be known as country music. His band, the Skillet Lickers, was one of the most innovative and influential string bands of the 1920s and 1930s. Its most notable members were Clayton McMichen (fiddle and vocal) and the blind Riley Puckett (guitar and vocal).

Biography

Gid Tanner made a living as a chicken farmer for most of his life. He learned to play the fiddle at the age of 14 and quickly established a reputation as one of the finest musicians in Georgia. Early on, he participated in several fiddle conventions together with his rival Fiddlin' John Carson, what one of them didn't win, the other would. Tanner reportedly had a repertoire of more than 2000 songs.

Tanner and Puckett traveled to New York City in March 1924 to make the first of a series of duet recordings for Columbia Records. The first recording made with the Skillet Lickers was “Hand Me Down My Walking Cane,” recorded in Atlanta on April 17, 1926. It was released by Columbia on a 78rpm disc backed with “Watermelon On the Vine". The group would eventually record more than 100 songs for Columbia before splitting up in 1931. Three years later, Tanner and Puckett reformed the Skillet Lickers and had several releases on Bluebird Records. Tanner stopped making records in 1934, but continued performing into his seventies.

Legacy and influence

Many of the songs they recorded remain popular with bluegrass and country musicians to this day. Among their best-known songs are "Alabama Jubilee", "Shortnin' Bread", "Old Joe Clark", "Casey Jones", "John Henry", "Bully of the Town", "Bile Them Cabbage Down", "Cotton-Eyed Joe", "Fly Around My Pretty Little Miss", "Soldier’s Joy", "Bonaparte's Retreat", "Leather Breeches", "Four Cent Cotton" and their biggest seller, "Down Yonder". Their comedy recordings, including "A Corn Liquor Still in Georgia" and "A Fiddler’s Convention in Georgia" were equally popular.

The lyrics of the Skillet Lickers' music used language then common among rural white Americans at the time, but which today is considered offensive and racist, including song titles like "Nigger in the Woodpile" and "Run Nigger Run".

Gid Tanner & The Skillet Lickers were inducted into the Georgia Music Hall of Fame in 1988. Following his death in 1960, Tanner's grandson and great-grandson continued performing as the Skillet Lickers. Phil Tanner, Gid's grandson, hosts an open jam session on Friday nights in a refurbished chicken house on his father's old farm in Dacula, Georgia.

Songwriter Bob Dylan wrote and performed a version of Gid Tanner's "Down on Tanner's Farm", retitled and reset as "New York Town". It can be heard in Martin Scorsese's Dylan tribute film.

References

*Cohen, Norm. Liner Notes for the CD "Old Time Fiddle Tunes and Songs from North Georgia" (County Records, 1996)
*Russell, Tony. "Country Music Records: A Discography, 1921-1942" (Oxford University Press, 2004)
* [http://www.georgiaencyclopedia.org/nge/Article.jsp?id=h-917 The New Georgia Encyclopedia]
*"Stars of Country Music", (University of Illinois Press, 1975)

External links

*http://www.southernmusic.net/gidtanner.htm