There is a benefit being held this Saturday in Greenville, SC for Etta Baker who has incurred some expenses with health related problems. Here is the offical blurb:
Music Lovers & Traditional Musicians:
A benefit is being held at the Coffee Underground next Saturday to help raise money for a good cause, to help raise funds for Etta Baker who needs help covering her medical expenses. Etta has a heart condition and has been under a doctor's care for a while now. For those who don't know her, below is some vita information from the North Carolina Arts Council:
Etta Baker is a master of the blues guitar style that became popular in the southern Piedmont after the turn of the century. Raised in the foothills of Caldwell County, she began picking the guitar at the age of three. "I was so small, I had to lay the guitar on the bed, stand on the floor and play on the neck," she recalls. Soon she was making music at community entertainments and corn shuckings.
Mrs. Baker plays the six-string and twelve-string guitars and the five-string banjo. Her playing is by turns gentle and strong, subtle and assertive. She fingerpicks with clarity and precision and works out finely crafted versions of tunes. Her music appears on the influential album, Instrumental Music of the Southern Appalachians and is also featured on Music From the Hills of Caldwell County. Her popular CD, One Dime Blues, produced by the North Carolina Arts Council, came out in 1991 to great reviews. Since the 1980s, Etta Baker has performed at venues throughout the United States and Europe including the National Folk Festival at Wolf Trap Park in Virginia, the 1984 World's Fair in Knoxville. In 1989, she was one of the first to be honored with a North Carolina Folk Heritage Award, and she received a National Heritage Fellowship Award from the National Endowment for the Arts in 1991.
Mrs. Baker and her late husband Lee raised nine children, many of whom carry on the family musical tradition. In addition to her duties as a mother, Mrs. Baker worked for more than 20 years at the Skyland Textile Company.
Details of the event are as follows:
Date: January 29
Acoustic Seen Benefit for Etta Baker, Coffee Underground, Greenville, SC,
www.acousticseen.com , 864-298-0494
Time: 6-11pm
Performers:
615pm Gingerthistle
7:00 Carolina Tunecroppers
7:45 Bob & Amy Buckingham with Phil Garrett
8:30 John Galop
9:15 Michael King
10 Steve McGaha
If you would like to help out with a donation, but can't make this event, please contact Lucy Allen lucyallen@earthlink.net or Ray Guenther dryridge@mindspring.com . Thanks
