September 26, 2006
Etta Baker, 93, Blues Guitarist, Dies
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
MORGANTON, N.C., Sept. 25 (AP) — Etta Baker, an influential blues guitarist who did not become a professional musician until she was 60, died on Saturday in Fairfax, Va., while visiting a daughter who had had a stroke. She was 93.
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“Like B. B. King and single-string blues, anybody who has picked up acoustic finger-style guitar has been influenced by Etta whether they know it or not,” said Tim Duffy, who worked with Ms. Baker through his Music Maker Relief Foundation.
Copyright 2006 The New York Times Company
― curmudgeon (DC Steve), Tuesday, 26 September 2006 12:38 (nineteen years ago)
September 26, 2006
Etta Baker, 93, Blues Guitarist, Dies
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
MORGANTON, N.C., Sept. 25 (AP) — Etta Baker, an influential blues guitarist who did not become a professional musician until she was 60, died on Saturday in Fairfax, Va., while visiting a daughter who had had a stroke. She was 93.
Her death was confirmed by Darlene Davis, another daughter. She had been in failing health for years.
The American bluesman Taj Mahal, who recorded an album with Ms. Baker in 2004, was among those who found inspiration from her rhythmic finger-picking.
“I came upon that record in the 60’s,” Taj Mahal said. “It didn’t have any pictures so I had no idea who she was until I got to meet her years later. But man, that chord in ‘Railroad Bill,’ that was just the chord. It just cut right through me.”
Ms. Baker was raised in a musical family in western North Carolina. She made her first mark in music in 1956, when she appeared on a compilation album called “Instrumental Music of the Southern Appalachians.” The recording influenced the growing folk revival, especially her versions of “Railroad Bill” and “One-Dime Blues.”
She worked for 26 years at a textile mill in Morganton before quitting at 60 to pursue a career as a musician.
Ms. Baker became a hit on the international folk-festival circuit, playing Piedmont blues, a mix of the clattery rhythms of bluegrass and blues. She won a 1991 Folk Heritage Fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts.
Outside her musical career, Ms. Baker raised nine children. Her husband suffered a debilitating stroke in 1964. That same year she was in a car accident that killed one of her grandsons. In the span of a month in 1967, her husband died and one of her sons was killed in the Vietnam War.
Ms. Baker toured well into her 80’s, but she finally quit because of heart problems.
This year she no longer had the strength to play guitar so she focused on the banjo. She could still play well a month ago, said Wayne Martin, who plays fiddle on her banjo collection coming out next year.
“Like B. B. King and single-string blues, anybody who has picked up acoustic finger-style guitar has been influenced by Etta whether they know it or not,” said Tim Duffy, who worked with Ms. Baker through his Music Maker Relief Foundation.
Copyright 2006 The New York Times Company
― curmudgeon (DC Steve), Tuesday, 26 September 2006 12:39 (nineteen years ago)