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Funeral held in Burdine for fiddler Kenny Baker





Above, a younger Kenny Baker with his fiddle. At right, a road sign on U.S. 23 near Jenkins acknowledges Baker’s Letcher County origins. Funeral services for Baker were held Tuesday in Burdine.

Above, a younger Kenny Baker with his fiddle. At right, a road sign on U.S. 23 near Jenkins acknowledges Baker’s Letcher County origins. Funeral services for Baker were held Tuesday in Burdine.

Funeral services were held in Burdine Tuesday for a Jenkins native who played fiddle with “Father of Bluegrass” Bill Monroe for more than 25 years.

Kenneth Clayton “Kenny” Baker, 85, of Cottontown, Tenn., died July 8 of complications from a stroke at Sumner Regional Medical Center in Gallatin, Tenn.

Baker, considered one of the most influential fiddlers in the history of bluegrass music, played with Monroe in his group “ The Bluegrass Boys” longer than any other musician. Monroe, a member of the Grand Ole Opry, met Baker while Baker was playing with future Country Music Hall of Famer Don Gibson and offered him a job. Baker had joined Gibson’s band as a replacement for Marion Sumner, who was raised in Vicco but later lived in Letcher County.

According to the International Bluegrass Music Museum, Baker joined the Bluegrass Boys for the first time in 1957, then quit on occasion to work in an underground coal mine to help make ends meet. He rejoined the Bluegrass boys in 1962 and again in 1968 after his sons were grown. Baker played on every recording Monroe made between November 1968 and December 1983, a total of 237 songs. He parted ways with Monroe on October 22, 1984, after becoming upset when Monroe ordered him to play “Jerusalem Ridge” after hearing the demand shouted by a drunken audience member.

 

 

After leaving Monroe’s band in 1984, Baker spent one summer performing with bluegrass musicians Bob Black and Alan and Aleta Murphy. Baker then played with former Flatt & Scruggs dobro player Josh Graves until Graves’ death in 2006.

In 1999, Baker was named to the International Bluegrass Music Hall of Honor, two years after the honor was bestowed on Graves and eight years after Monroe was inducted. He received a National Heritage Fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts in 1993.

Baker, who learned the fiddle at age 8 after watching his father Thaddeus Baker and grandfather Richard Baker perform, played the instrument in a unique four-finger style in open G tuning he said was influenced by Ernest Johnson, a blind black musician who sold peanuts in Jenkins. Baker was known for his smooth “long-bow” style, which was also influenced by his love of jazz music. He recorded several albums for record labels including Rounder Records, Jasmine, County Records and OMS Records. “Cotton Baggin’ 200” and “Spider Bit the Baby” were his most recent recordings with OMS Records.

Baker, who once said “bluegrass is nothing but a hillbilly version of jazz,” was known proud of the many original numbers he recorded and the friendship given from his fellow musicians and the way other fiddlers admired and followed his style.

He served in the U. S. Navy during World War II and worked as an underground coal miner for Consolidation Coal Co. (later Beth-Elkhorn) before quitting the mines to concentrate on his musical career full-time.

Baker was born to the late Thaddeus and Myrtle Baker on June 26, 1926 in Burdine. He married Audrey Sizemore in 1946 and they lived together in Jenkins until 1968.

In addition to his wife, he is survived by two sons, Kenneth Baker Jr. and Johnny Lee Baker, who played in Dry Branch Fire Squad in the late ‘70s and early ‘80s; a brother, Tom Baker; two sisters, Gloria and Margaret; four grandchildren, Allisa Feazel, Kenny Bill, Jesse and Brian Baker; and several great-grandchildren.

Services were held July 12 at Burdine Freewill Baptist Church.


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