1. Etta Baker was an American Piedmont blues guitarist and singer from North Carolina.
12 Facts About Etta Baker
1. 2.
Etta Baker was born Etta Lucille Reid in Caldwell County, North Carolina, of African-American, Native American, and European-American heritage.
3.
Etta Baker was taught by her father, Boone Reid, a longtime player of the Piedmont blues on several instruments.
4.
Etta Baker played both the 6-string and the 12-string acoustic guitar and the five-string banjo.
5.
Etta Baker was first recorded in the summer of 1956, after she and her father happened across the folksinger Paul Clayton while visiting the Cone mansion, in Blowing Rock, North Carolina, near their home in Morganton.
6.
Etta Baker's father asked Clayton to listen to his daughter playing her signature "One Dime Blues".
7.
Clayton recorded five solo guitar pieces by Etta Baker, which were released as part of the 1956 album Instrumental Music of the Southern Appalachians, one of the first commercially released recordings of African American banjo music.
8.
Etta Baker said that she got inspiration for chords through her dreams, stating that it is "like putting a crossword puzzle together".
9.
Etta Baker influenced many well-known musical artists, including Bob Dylan, Taj Mahal, and Kenny Wayne Shepherd.
10.
Etta Baker 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.
11.
Etta Baker received the North Carolina Folk Heritage Award from the North Carolina Arts Council in 1989, a National Heritage Fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts in 1991, and the North Carolina Award in 2003.
12.
Etta Baker was nominated for several Blues Music Awards : in the Traditional Blues Female Artist category in 1987 and 1989, and her album Railroad Bill in the Acoustic Album category in 2000.