"George Lee Hawkins was another great fiddler, from Bath County, who had some renown outside his own community, having recorded in 1946 for Artus Moser, discs that went into the AFS collection at the Library of Congress. George's fiddling may be my favorite of all the players on this set. His "Humphrey's Jig" is one of the all-time mind-blowing performances, even more so if one can visualize his dancing left arm driving the bowing intricacies in this showpiece. (In fact, John Harrod did capture Mr. Hawkins doing just this on videotape at a small festival held at Morehead State University.) He was known as a "hornpipe" fiddler; he actually did play mountain hornpipes in that old dotted rhythm rather than turning them into driving reels, as most southern fiddlers do. Listening to him bow and phrase is an advanced lesson in the finer intricacies of old-time fiddling. He also obviously enjoyed his art. His introduction to a piece he learned from one of his mentors, the black sharecropper Bill Trumbo, sets the tone: "‘Rat's Gone To Rest' . . . with D-Con!" And we also have some fine lyrics from him for "Boatin' Up Sandy"—"Way down yonder boating up Sandy/Red top boots and a quart of good brandy/Some like chicken foot, I likes the liver/I loves the pretty girl who lives on the river/Sometimes drunk, sometimes boozy/Old Johnny Huckleberry a-hugging his Susie." Now that is poetry! One of George's mentors was the legendary Tom Riley (some home recordings of Riley are said to have survived) who later moved to Marion, IN, where he would be an influence on John Summers. Summers sometimes would accompany Riley on visits back to Bath County. It is interesting to compare Summers' versions of tunes to those of Hawkins." ~ Written by Kerry Blech for an article in the The Old-Time Herald; Volume 6, Number 8; http://www.oldtimeherald.org/archive/back_issues/volume-6/6-8/reviews.html