Blues Guitarist Etta Baker Dies

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Blues guitarist Etta Baker died of a stroke in Fairfax, Va., on Saturday. She was 93.

Baker, who grew up in North Carolina, first appeared on the album Instrumental Music of the Southern Appalachians . She would go on to become a favorite among fans of acoustic rural blues and received a 1991 Folk Heritage Fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts.



  • John_Hammond_courtesy_johnhammond.com.jpg

    Hammond came to the blues through the folk boom of the late 1950s and early 1960s, which he experienced firsthand in New York’s Greenwich Village.

  • Flea_by_Gus_Van_Sant_copy.jpg

    “Cerebral and academic thought is a different way to approach music,” Flea says of his continuing dive into jazz. “I’ve always relied on emotion and intuition and physicality.”

  • Dee_Dee_Bridgewater_Courtesy_Dee_Dee_Bridgewater.jpg

    Vocalist Dee Dee Bridgewater will be among the headliners at this year’s DC JazzFest.

  • Ted_Panke_Nicole_Zuraitis_copy.jpg

    Blindfold Test proctor Ted Panken, left, with the Grammy-winning Nicole Zuraitis.

  • Maria_Schneider_%C2%A92026_Mark_Sheldon_-07_copy.jpg

    “These days, with curated news, where people only get half the story, people can’t even speak to family members anymore,” Schneider laments.


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