Mrs. Etta Baker Family & Friends - Instrumental Music Of The Southern Appalachians

File: MP3 @ 320K/s
Time: 34:22
Size: 78.7 MB
Styles: Country blues, Piedmont blues
Released: 1956/2007
Art: Front

1. Cripple Creek (1:47)
2. Pateroller Song (1:40)
3. One Dime Blues (2:58)
4. Sourwood Mountain (1:48)
5. Goin' Down The Road Feeling Bad (1:22)
6. Amazing Grace (1:42)
7. The Girl I Left Behind Me (1:23)
8. Marching Jaybird (1:19)
9. John Brown's Dream (1:30)
10. Sally Goodin (1:00)
11. Railroad Bill (2:37)
12. Soldier's Joy (1:57)
13. Molly Brooks (1:19)
14. Pretty Polly (1:27)
15. Johnson Boys (1:28)
16. John Henry (2:38)
17. Drunken Hiccups (1:09)
18. Shady Grove (1:06)
19. Bully Of The Town (2:56)
20. Skip To My Lou (1:06)

Etta Baker started playing guitar when she was three, and played for an hour a day until she died. So she was really good. Like Libba Cotten, Etta’s style was a syncopated fingerpicking style rooted in the 19th Century. Called the “Piedmont” style, it owes as much to ragtime, Appalachian, and songster traditions as it does to the blues (which itself grew out of these traditions). Her music had a gentle, rollicking, and joyful flavor not unlike that of Mississippi John Hurt. Besides being a fantastic guitar and banjo player who influenced John Fahey, Taj Mahal, Doc Watson, Bob Dylan, and countless others, she was a warm and gracious person.

Instrumental Music Of The Southern Appalachians

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Etta Baker - Railroad Bill

File: MP3 @ 320K/s
Time: 48:07
Size: 110.2 MB
Styles: Piedmont blues
Released: 1999/2012
Art: Front

1. Carolina Breakdown (3:12)
2. Railroad Bill (2:42)
3. I Get The Blues When It Rains (3:04)
4. Careless Love (3:26)
5. Don't Let Your Deal Go Down (2:37)
6. Sunny Tennessee (1:47)
7. Mint Julep (3:09)
8. Brown's Boogie (2:33)
9. Lonesome Road Blues (2:14)
10. Goodbye Booze (1:59)
11. Nobody's Business (1:53)
12. One Dime Blues (1:42)
13. Going Down The Road Feeling Bad (2:38)
14. Candyman (2:22)
15. Miss A Little Miss (2:11)
16. Baby Let Me Lay It On You (2:52)
17. Chilly Winds (2:22)
18. John Henry (3:17)
19. Cripple Creek (1:56)

The "premier woman Piedmont blues guitar instrumentalist" is a wordy but accurate description of 87-year-old Etta Baker of Morganton, NC. One of the last pickers who was around when the music was first being recorded, Baker's 83 years of practice is manifested in these wonderful recordings of traditional folk ballads. One highlight follows another, and although "Brown's Boogie" trips up the album's gentle flow, the rest is front-porch perfect. This is music you never get tired of listening to. Newcomers to guitar should buy this album, both to marvel at the intricate technique and to amuse themselves with how frustratingly difficult it can be. ~ Jim Smith

Etta Baker of Morganton, North Carolina, was born in 1913 and has been playing guitar since the age of four. She is the premier woman Piedmont blues guitarist. Her only contemporary was the late Elizabeth Cotton of Carrboro, North Carolina. Etta maintains a beautiful garden - an Eden of flowers, herbs, shrubs, healing plants, and fruit trees. She works in her yard every morning, coming inside only for lunch. Etta is constantly working on new arrangements as she plays the guitar every day.

"Because she was a stunning beauty, Etta's husband refused to let her travel and perform away from home. She never stopped playing the music! This gracious grandmother was the source of a great deal of joy and surprise when I found that she still played guitar after I had heard her early recordings in the sixties. One of the signature chords of my guitar vocabulary comes from her version of "Railroad Bill." This was the first guitar-picking style that I ever learned." ~Taj Mahal

Recording information: Morganton, NC (05/1995-06/1998).

Railroad Bill

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