Gid Tanner and The Skillet Lickers was probably old time country music's best-known string band of the 1920s - they almost certainly had the biggest sales in the '20s and '30s. Their first visit to the recording studios was in April 1926. Two regular members of the band were Gid Tanner himself and guitarist/vocalist Riley Puckett who had already made records together. The success of those discs encouraged Columbia to form the Skillet Lickers as a studio band. A real innovation was the inclusion of three fiddle players in the line-up - prior to this twin fiddles had been the maximum. The three-fiddle format would become a regular feature on Skillet Lickers' records - adding to their distinctive sound. Their first issued sides by the group were released in June 1926 and sold over 207,000 copies. At this time, sales of 30,000 were considered a success. The Skillet Lickers (and Old Timey music in general) were on the map. The band would evolve to feature rustic comedy sketches which developed into series and exploited the imagined characteristics of country folk. Several of those sides are included here. Here's Old Timey music in it's leaping, laughing, lively youth featuring some of it's most expert exponents. If you want to know more about country music's origins it's essential.