Etta Baker, born on March 31, 1913, in Caldwell County, North Carolina, was an American Piedmont blues guitarist and singer. She began playing guitar at the age of three under the instruction of her father, Boone Reid. Her recording debut occurred in the summer of 1956 when folksinger Paul Clayton recorded her playing her signature song, “One Dime Blues”, at her home, which led to the release of the album Instrumental Music of the Southern Appalachians in the same year. She later signed with Rounder to release the album One-Dime Blues (1991). Her subsequent album releases include Railroad Bill (1999) and Etta Baker with Taj Mahal (2004), on which she collaborated with Taj Mahal, followed by Carolina Breakdown in 2005 with her sister Cora Phillips. Baker received the Brown-Hudson Folklore Award in 1982, the North Carolina Folk Heritage Award in 1989, a National Heritage Fellowship in 1991, and the North Carolina Award in 2003, before she died on September 23, 2006, in Fairfax, Virginia.
