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Etta Baker
American Piedmont blues guitarist and singer Etta Baker performing at the Wayne C. Henderson Music Festival and Guitar Competition, Grayson Highlands State Park, Virginia, June 15, 2002.
Etta Baker
American musician
Also known as: Etta Lucille Reid
Quick Facts
- Née:
- Etta Lucille Reid
- Born:
- March 31, 1913, Caldwell county, North Carolina, U.S.
- Died:
- September 23, 2006, Fairfax, Virgina (aged 93)
Etta Baker (born March 31, 1913, Caldwell county, North Carolina, U.S.—died September 23, 2006, Fairfax, Virgina) was an American folk musician who influenced the folk music revival of the 1950s and ’60s with her mastery of East Coast Piedmont blues, a unique fingerpicking style of guitar-playing that is common to the Appalachian Mountains, especially areas of Georgia, the Carolinas, and Virginia. Baker, a textile worker from a musical family, became known to a wider audience chiefly for her contributions to the folk music compilation album Instrumental Music of the Southern Appalachians (1956). Although her performance on that album widely influenced ...(100 of 186 words)