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Etta Baker

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Etta Baker Acoustic Blues

Biography

Etta Baker’s music reflects the open atmosphere in which she learned to play. African-American blues, white country picking and English fiddle tunes blend and erupt in her unique style of finger work on both guitar and banjo. Baker’s father, Boone Reid, played his own style of clawhammer banjo and loved to pick up the guitar to play the blues. When Etta took up guitar at the age of three, he passed on that mix of mountain music and deep-felt Piedmont blues to his daughter. Over the course of her lifetime, that daughter became one of the finest finger-style Piedmont Blues guitarist to come out of North Carolina.

 

How We Helped:
Music Maker has helped Etta with expenses for remodeling her kitchen, car maintenance, and prescription medicines. Music Maker has also gifted Etta with a banjo, guitars and amplifiers. Additionally, it has recorded her CDs and been instrumental in having her music featured on radio shows throughout the country, and in setting up performances in in North Carolina. Etta is featured in the book Music Makers: Portraits and Songs from the Roots of America (2004).

 

Etta Baker was born in 1913 to a musical family in the North Carolina foothills of Appalachia, a musical and racial crossroads. She claims a mix....


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