Baker died in Fairfax, Va., while visiting a daughter who had a stroke, according to the Associated Press.
"She just had to go; she just had to see my sister," Darlene Davis, another daughter who lives next door to Baker's house in Morganton, told the AP. "She was a great mother and a tower of strength for the family. We always looked up to her."
Baker was raised in a musical family in Western North Carolina [according to the AP]. She made her first mark in music in 1956, when she appeared on a compilation album called Instrumental Music of the Southern Appalachians. The recording was very influential on the growing folk revival, especially her versions of "Railroad Bill" and "One-Dime Blues."
She worked for 26 years at a textile mill in Morganton before quitting at age 60 to pursue a career as a professional musician.
Baker became a hit on the international folk-festival circuit, playing Piedmont blues, a mix of clattery rhythms of bluegrass and blues.
Baker raised a family that eventually numbered nine children. She also suffered great losses. Her husband had a debilitating stroke in 1964. That same year, she was in a serious car wreck that killed one of her grandsons. In the span of a month in 1967, her husband died and one of her sons was killed in the Vietnam War.
"She embodied everything we love about the South," said Tim Duffy, who worked with Baker through his Music Maker Relief Foundation.
"She was strong, warm, witty, gentle, a gardener and also the world's premiere Piedmont-style blues guitarist," he said. "Like B.B. King and single-string blues, anybody who has picked up acoustic finger-style guitar has been influenced by Etta whether they know it or not."
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