When Etta Baker died Saturday the world — not just North Carolina — lost a treasure. When I first started playing guitar in the early ’60s I quickly became enamored of rural blues. Greensboro’s Sonny Terry, Chapel Hill’s Libba Cotton and Morganton’s Etta Baker were some of my favorites.
The early-’60s folk era pretty much paired people off into those who liked “authentic” folk music (e.g., Baker, Terry, Cotton, Mississippi John Hurt) and those who liked the prettified stuff (e.g., Peter Paul and Mary, The Brothers Four, The Highwaymen). I was one of the former. The grittier it was the better I liked it. All the old practitioners of rural blues are dead or dying. Let’s hope the music survives.
