Etta Baker’s Banjo
Friday, February 12 2010
by Frank Stasio and Katy Barron
musicmakerstore.org
You may know Etta Baker as a guitar legend in the world of Piedmont Blues, but she was also a pretty fine banjo player. There aren’t many recordings of Etta Baker playing the banjo. But a new one out by the Music Maker’s Relief Foundation shows how her work inspired a banjo revival among African American musicians. On today’s program host Frank Stasio discusses the little-known banjo legacy of Etta Baker with: Tim Duffy, founder of the Music Maker Relief Foundation; Rhiannon Giddens of the African American string band the Carolina Chocolate Drops; and Glenn Hinson, chair of the Curriculum in Folklore in the College of Arts and Sciences at UNC-Chapel Hill.
