Queen Of Piedmont
Blues Dies At 93

I’m not exactly what you call an extravagant spender when it comes to things like clothes, cars or furniture. In fact, until I got married last fall, I had probably managed to get through 45 years of life without spending more than forty bucks on any one piece of furniture that I’d ever owned.

Maybe that’s why most of the Bachelor Jeff furniture failed to make the cut when Leslie and I moved into the new house…

Lady sings the blues. Morganton’s Etta Baker performing in the Traditional Music Tent at MerleFest 2004. Photo by Jeff Eason

If I have one shopping compulsion, it is the fact that I cannot physically walk by a music or thrift store without looking at what CDs are in the used bin. It’s an addiction that goes all the way back to my teenage years when I would regularly scour the cutout and used racks for vinyl records to add to my already out of control collection. I know I’m not the only stereo-holic out there and I imagine there would be support groups for us if any of us truly wanted to quit. But we don’t.

The downside of this habit truly falls on the heads of my family and friends who have waited patiently in a record shop as I plow my way, from A to Z, through the used CD racks.

The upside of this habit is spending a couple of bucks and discovering an album or musician that I love.

That’s exactly what happened in the early 90s when I discovered a promo CD in the used bin by North Carolina musician Etta Baker titled One-Dime Blues on the Rounder Select label. I had heard of Etta Baker, but I had never heard Etta Baker.

For the next month I played the album non-stop. It featured 20 new recordings by Baker, a guitarist and singer who performed regularly around her hometown of Morganton but hadn’t recorded an album since 1956. Some of the songs were familiar old tunes like “John Henry” and “Going Down the Road Feeling Bad,” but most of them were long forgotten gems such as “Bully of the Town,” “Round My Back Door Selling Coal” and “Police Dog Blues.”

The most impressive thing about the album was how strong and joyful Baker’s playing and voice were when performing the style known as the Piedmont Blues. She used a two and three-fingered picking style that immediately made me put down my plastic guitar pick for a while. I never did get the hang of her picking style, but I had a lot of fun trying to imitate it.

A few years after buying One-Dime Blues I was able to see Etta Baker play live at MerleFest in Wilkesboro. Over the years I guess I saw her perform four or five times at that festival and once at the Thrill on the Hill blues festival here in Boone. She always took time to explain to the audience what she was doing, where she learned certain songs, and why she liked them. She even had the audacity to play these old folk and blues songs on the electric guitar and the image of the elderly African American woman playing a white Fender Stratocaster in the Traditional Music Tent at MerleFest is one I will never forget.

Etta Baker died last weekend in Warrenton, Virginia, at the age of 93. She had been making frequent trips from her home in Morganton to Virginia to visit one of her daughters who requires dialysis. Baker had been in declining health over the past few years and had cancelled her last scheduled appearance at MerleFest.

Fortunately for music lovers, she had remained active during the last few years of her life, playing guitar on the latest Kenny Wayne Shepherd CD and recording an album of banjo music scheduled for release next year.

For me, Baker is on the very short list of what I consider to be the most influential musicians to come out of the music rich state of North Carolina. The others on that list include Earl Scruggs, Doc Watson, Charlie Poole, John Coltrane, Nina Simone, and the Piedmont Blues duo Sonny Terry and Brownie McGhee.

Amazingly, she almost didn’t return to performing publicly at all. She raised nine children in Caldwell County while working in the Buster Brown textile mill, and only played music on the side. In 1958 she was approached by a professional musician who suggested she switch careers.

“This was on a Wednesday,” said Baker in a 2005 interview during Etta Baker Day festivities in Morganton. “I went in and told ‘em I was quitting on Friday, and I did. I never did go back.”

That decision was one that changed the course of musical history. Thousands of aspiring guitarists have imitated her picking style and her version of “Railroad Bill” is an out-and-out classic.

Despite her long absence from the limelight, Baker’s return was an incredibly successful one. Audiences loved her down-home style and enthusiastically dubbed her The Queen of the Piedmont Blues. She was the recipient of the National Heritage Fellowship from the National Endowment of the Arts and also the Folk Heritage Award from the North Carolina Arts Council.

Most of all, she was the recipient of much love and admiration from the thousands of musicians and music lovers who came to hear her play.