Hickory Nuts

Band names are created for a variety of reasons and with a variety of techniques. Sometimes a name is an accurate description of a group's music, while in other circumstances the music a group plays has evolved to fit a name that was chosen at random out of a dictionary. In the case of this North Carolina string band of the '20s and '30s, a simple suggestion from a bandmember provided a name when the as-yet-untagged group was in a studio ready to cut tracks for the Okeh label. "Well, we're all from Hickory, and we're a bunch of nuts," said one member, and so the Hickory Nuts w...