[Dixielandjazz] Etta Baker - Blues Musician - Obit

[Steve Barbone]

Etta Baker, 93, Blues Guitarist, Dies

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She became a professional musician at age 60 so there is hope for all the
young people on the DJML who are thinking about it. First guitar, and then
when she became too old and weak to play it, switched to banjo.

Cheers,
Steve Barbone


By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS - Published: September 26, 2006

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.

³I came upon that record in the 60¹s,² Taj Mahal said. ³It didn¹t have any
pictures so I had no idea who she was until I got to meet her years later.
But man, that chord in ŒRailroad Bill,¹ that was just the chord. It just cut
right through me.²

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 ³Instrumental Music of the Southern Appalachians.² The recording
influenced the growing folk revival, especially her versions of ³Railroad
Bill² and ³One-Dime Blues.²

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 80¹s, 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.

³Like 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,² said Tim Duffy, who worked with Ms. Baker through his Music Maker
Relief Foundation.