The Tanner Legacy Now: Phil Tanner’s Skillet Lickers

Online Reviews

“Great and enjoyable album: This is quite an interesting CD, it is nothing like the original Skillet Lickers, possibly a bit more like the 1934 session where the remaining members recorded for one last time.
Gid Tanner’s great-grandson Russ Tanner plays most of the lead fiddle heard here, although some tracks are with Phil Tanner instead. While none of these two were as virtuosic as Gordon Tanner, they handle the tunes good enough.

What’s special about these early 90s recordings is this large gathering of people with a nice selection of tunes and arrangements and quite many vocals. Admittedly most of the band hasn’t too powerful voices, so Art Rosenbaum takes most of the lead singing, he also adds some quite complex banjo solos.

Julian McDaniel plays mandolin like Ted Hawkins did in the 1934 session, although switches for some tunes to harmonica which he has mastered very well to say the least – listen to Fire on the Mountain on this CD to hear.
This track is also the best on the album, with high energy in the vocals by Art Rosenbaum, and really wild guitar runs by Smokey Joe Miller. (Art sings quite an unusual amount of verses not otherwise heard for this tune).

Smokey Joe Miller plays some terrific guitar solos, see ‘ Down Yonder ‘ and Flop-Eared Mule.

Generally the band performs in a ‘oldtime music’ style , adding solo breaks for different instruments almost like a Bluegrass band would do, and like the latter they also have a Dobro player.

A great CD and fun to listen to, if you don’t mind that the vocals sometimes are without any power, that is something they have in common with ‘several’ oldtime bands who otherwise are complete masters of their instruments.” — Stu, Amazon Reviews