Etta Baker
Etta Baker | |
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Background information | |
Birth name | Etta Lucille Reid |
Born | March 31, 1913 |
Origin | Morganton, North Carolina, U.S. |
Died | September 23, 2006 Fairfax, Virginia, U.S. | (aged 93)
Genres | |
Instrument(s) | |
Labels |
Etta Baker (March 31, 1913 – September 23, 2006) was an American Piedmont blues guitarist and singer from North Carolina.
Early life and career
She was born Etta Lucille Reid in
The family moved to Keysville, Virginia, in 1916.[6] There were eight Reid children, four girls and four boys. All but one survived into adulthood. Each of her siblings played instruments. Occasionally, Baker, her father, and her sister, Cora, would play together at dances on Saturday night.[4] Boone Reid worked a series of jobs during the 1910s and 1920s, occasionally taking work in factories and shipyards in other states. The rest of the family lived with an uncle. By the time Etta Reid was fourteen, the entire family worked on a tobacco farm in southern Virginia, which meant that they were together. She dropped out of school after tenth grade.[6]
Baker was first recorded in the summer of 1956, after she and her father happened across the folksinger
Baker has said that she gets inspiration for chords through her dreams, stating that it is "like putting a crossword puzzle together".[3] Baker has influenced many well-known musical artists, including Bob Dylan, Taj Mahal, and Kenny Wayne Shepherd.[4]
Etta married Lee Baker, a piano player, in 1936 after courting for six years.[1] They had nine children, one of whom was killed in the Vietnam War in 1967, the same year her husband died. For a while after these deaths, she stopped playing, but found she missed the consolation the blues brought her.[6] She last lived in Morganton, North Carolina, and died at the age of 93 in Fairfax, Virginia, while visiting a daughter who had suffered a stroke.
Awards and honors
Baker received the
Discography
- 1956 : Instrumental Music from the Southern Appalachians (Tradition Records; reissued 1997)
- 1991 : One-Dime Blues (Rounder)
- 1998 : The North Carolina Banjo Collection, various artists (Rounder)
- 1999 : Railroad Bill (Music Maker)
- 2004 : Etta Baker with Taj Mahal (Music Maker 50)
- 2005 : Carolina Breakdown, with Cora Phillips (Music Maker 56)
- 2006 : Knoxville Rag, with Kenny Wayne Shepherd, issued on CD as 10 Days Out: Blues from the Backroads, with a DVD showing Shepherd and Baker playing guitar in her kitchen (Reprise Records)
- 2009: "Banjo" (Music Maker)
- 2015: "Railroad Bill" Vinyl Reissue (Music Maker)
References
- ^ OCLC 47644303.
- ^ "Etta Baker and Cora Phillips: Carolina Breakdown". CD Baby. Archived from the original on February 18, 2006. Retrieved December 4, 2017.
- ^ a b "Our State | Etta Baker, Blues Guitarist | Season 1000". Video.unctv.org. Archived from the original on October 18, 2020. Retrieved October 16, 2020.
- ^ a b c d e "Etta Baker, Legend of Piedmont Blues". Npr.org. Retrieved April 5, 2016.
- ^ "The Etta Baker Project". Ettabakerproject.com. Archived from the original on April 19, 2016. Retrieved April 5, 2016.
- ^ a b c "Interview G-0253: Etta Baker, Southern Oral History Program Database". dc.lib.unc.edu. Louis Round Wilson Special Collections Library, UNC-Chapel Hill. Retrieved April 5, 2016.
- ISBN 978-0-8108-6132-9. Retrieved February 12, 2011.
- ^ "NEA National Heritage Fellowships 1991". Arts.gov. National Endowment for the Arts. Archived from the original on September 27, 2020. Retrieved December 10, 2020.
- ^ "Award Winners and Nominees [search]". blues.org. The Blues Foundation. 2017. Retrieved December 4, 2017.
- ^ "North Carolina Folklore Society | Promoting the Appreciation, Study, and Preservation of North Carolina's Rich Folk Cultural Heritages". Ecu.edu. Archived from the original on September 1, 2005. Retrieved June 14, 2014.
External links
This article's use of external links may not follow Wikipedia's policies or guidelines. (May 2019) |
- Etta Baker at AllMusic
- Etta Baker discography at Discogs
- Etta Baker page from Music Maker Relief Foundation
- Etta Baker Project Site to "promote and preserve the rich musical legacy of Etta Baker". Information, links and guitar tabs.
- Etta Baker David Holt's memoirs of his mentor.
- "Music Maker Relief Foundation Biography page". Retrieved September 24, 2007.
- Obituary
- Etta Baker MP3s, from Music Maker Relief Foundation
- Live recording of "One Dime Blues," performed by Baker (track 7, recorded at the 1994 Florida Folk Festival and made available for public use by the State Archives of Florida)