'She did not have the blues, she played the blues'

FRIENDS AND FAMILY REMEMBER MORE THAN JUST A MUSICAL ICON

Monday, October 2, 2006

By Marcie Young
Charlotte Observer Staff Writer

MORGANTON— Three months ago, 93-year-old Etta Baker plucked strawberries from the garden behind her small white home in Burke County. She carried the berries into her kitchen, placing the red fruit beside the plums she was getting ready to can and turn into jams.

The year before, when her health began failing her, Baker was forced to abandon strumming on her acoustic guitar and focus instead on the banjo. But the things Baker loved - playing the blues, gardening and cooking - were hobbies she refused to give up, her children said.

"You should see her back porch," said daughter Doris Thomas of the peonies, black-eyed Susans and geraniums Baker tended to everyday. "You have to walk through flowers just to get to the door."
The world remembers Baker, who died Sept. 26, as a Piedmont blues legend whose unusual two-fingered picking style influenced Bob Dylan and Taj Mahal. But in Morganton, Baker is also remembered as a mother, a friend and a woman who quit a textile factory job to follow a dream.

Baker was born in the foothills of Caldwell County in 1913, and within three years she had learned to play the guitar.

Her father, musician "Medicine" Boone Reid, would place the instrument across his lap and pluck at the strings while a young Baker rested her body between his knees, daughter Joann Thomas remembers her mother saying. He'd teach Baker how to pick with her tiny fingers, and she'd mimic the way he strummed the strings.

"When he smiled, she knew she hit the right chord," Joann Thomas said.

It took 60 years, however, for Baker to take up music full time. She had raised nine children and was working at a Morganton factory when, one day in 1958, a professional musician suggested she change careers.

"This was on a Wednesday," Baker recalled in a 2005 interview. "I went in and told 'em I was quitting on Friday, and I did. I never did go back."

At Baker's funeral Sunday at the Morganton Municipal Auditorium, her family paid tribute to Baker with their own gospel and blues, including a song by her 12-year-old great-grandson.

Baker's talents have been recognized throughout the world. She toured in Europe, and the National Endowment for the Arts awarded her with top honors. But it was her positive attitude that grandson Steven Avery said was one of her true accomplishments.

"She did not have the blues, she played the blues," Avery said at the funeral. "The `happy blues,' she called it."


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