This young Georgia fellow had about zero interest in old-time country music until his sister, Opal, got involved with a tall fellow by the name of John Dilleshaw. Not only did Dilleshaw (or Dilly) like to bring his guitar around for romantic serenades, he would even make his entire band tag along to provide a wooing groove. Soon young Harry was picking up fiddle tips from whomever happened to be in the band that week, and this was a north Georgia equivalent of the Juilliard School of Music as Dilleshaw's bands included players such as Lowe Stokes and Ahaz Gray, fiddle contest champions and hotshot players all. As a member of Dilly His Dill Pickles at age 18, Kiker had a chance to perform at unending square dances and even rowdier get-togethers known as "entertainments" or "frolics." He was in on many of his brother-in-law's classic old-time recording sessions for Brunswick and OKeh in the late '20s and early '30s, some done under the embarrassing band name of Seven Foot Dilly His Hot Pickles. Stunt fiddlers such as Gray or Joe Brown were featured on showy numbers or comic skits, but Kiker was among the core bandmembers who recorded numbers such as Bust Down Stomp and Georgia Stomp. He appears on some of these recordings as Bill Kiker. Dilleshaw passed on in the early '40s and Kiker maintained his involvement with various Dilly band sidemen, all of whom had passed on by the late '60s. In 2001, Kiker was still healthy enough to fiddle, confining most of his playing to his own kitchen where he often plays with a friend who is an ex-violinist from the Atlanta Symphony. ~ Eugene Chadbourne, Rovi