I recently heard with great sadness of the passing of one of my fiddling heroes and a friend, Kenny Baker (1926-2011), following a stroke. As I look back upon those who influenced me with their fiddling, he is definitely in my personal top five, and when it comes to the industry as a whole; he was the most respected and prolific of his generation.
My first exposure to the fiddler from Jenkins, Ky., was through watching him perform with Bill Monroe, The Father of Bluegrass Music, where he spent 23 years of his professional life. As a child, I sat hour after hour by our mahogany RCA stereo cabinet picking up the needle on “Jerusalem Ridge” or “Festival Waltz” from one of his many record albums and moving it back over and over again trying to capture in my mind and in my fingers one of his fiddle licks.
While I tried to emulate his skill and sound, I’ll be first to admit I have never reached the goal, though I keep trying. Kenny was in his 23rd year performing as a partner with the late legendary Dobro player Josh Graves when we sat down for a long interview in 2006. He fondly referred to this period as the one he most enjoys from his career. “It built up my confidence a lot,” he said. “We’ve never had a hard word. We’ve had boys working with us all the time, and never had a group that couldn’t get along. Josh is best man I ever worked with.”
During this period the duo was part of a group called The Masters, which also featured Jesse McReynolds and Eddie Adcock. That group garnered critical acclaim, Grammy nominations and played in some of the most distinct cultural centers of the country.
His long and steady career as a bluegrass and country fiddler is an amazing feat considering that he started his musical endeavor as a guitar picker in the small Virginia town of Bold Camp. “I learned to play guitar from an old black man there at home, a peanut vendor. He played his guitar in open G tuning,” he said. But it was his father’s fiddle that called to him each day from its case. His father, Thaddeus Earl Baker, played fiddle for square dances in their area.
“I never saw my dad play a show tune,” he said. “When he played, his bowing was different than any person I ever saw. I wanted to play fiddle so bad. I had to steal my daddy’s fiddle out when he’d be at work.” Young Kenny at age eight thought that his musical larceny was going unnoticed, but he left signs behind. “I use to get it, go upstairs, crawl out on the back of the house through a window, and sit on the roof and try to play that fiddle,” he said. “That was the only place I could hide. Every time I’d get the fiddle, if it was three minutes, I’d play it for a half-hour or two hours. One thing I did learn is to put mute on fiddle so it wasn’t too loud.”
But his father always seemed to know what he did, and finally, it all came to a head.
“One evening my dad came in, and I had put the fiddle back in that case, and he’d been on me four or five times,” he said. “He opened that case and looked. Got the bow out, and he showed me the stains where I was holding that bow way up (on the stick). I was grabbing the bow up way high above the frog. ‘What you are doing is damaging my bow every time you grab it up in the middle,’ he told me.
“I’d sit out there regardless of how hot it was,” he said. “I didn’t pay that weather no mind, and maybe I did perspire a little bit on it. He grabbed that bow and held it up to me and said every bit of this hair in this bow is made to be used. If you have to do this, don’t let me catch you grabbing my bow up like you have been. “He showed me how to hold that bow. I don’t hold the bow like a lot of people; my thumb is under that frog,” he said. While serving in the Navy in World War II, the guitar player was urged into fiddling for military square dances, which helped him move closer to what was to be his life’s calling.
The International Bluegrass Hall of Fame member is probably best known for his long career at the side of Bill Monroe. The Kentucky fiddler set himself apart from the rest of fiddlers by creating a style and sound of his own, which started by sitting on the roof of his family home in Virginia sawing the hours away on his father’s fiddle. He worked with Don Gibson at WNOX in Knoxville for four or five years in the early 1950s, he said.
“That is where I met Bill (Monroe),” he said. “Bill told me if you ever get dissatisfied working down here, come to Nashville. Don’t call me, just come on. That is the very words he told me. I believe he had Gordon Terry playing fiddle, and Joe Stuart comes in there somewhere.
“I came to Bill around 1954 or ’55. I’d go down and work a month or so, and go back to the mines,” he said. “Bill called me and told me he wanted to help him record. I went to my superintendent. Every coal company had their own doctor. Just go up, tell Doc Perry you want to be off a few days. I went and he gave me a slip and sent one down to the superintendent. I was gone about 30 days to do that, and Bobby Hicks, another good fiddle player, he was in the Army at that time and came in on furlough. That’s when we did “Scotland” and “Panhandle Country.” Bobby and me did that. I can’t remember the songs we did, but it came out pretty decent I thought.
“I enjoyed working with Bill. We always got along good,” he said. He was with him twice as long as any other Blue Grass Boy. I had the honor of getting to spend some time around Kenny when Bill Monroe took me under his wing. I enjoyed getting to see the master work up close and pick up a few of his licks along the way. When Monroe brought me on stage for a feature appearance, Kenny would generally step off stage and allow me to shine in the moment. I always respected him for that. He could have easily overridden my meager talents but instead he gave the teenager a chance.
When Kenny and Bill parted ways in 1984, his departure became a thing of legend in the bluegrass industry. Kenny said the whole thing simply arose over a disagreement between he and Bill over Bill not providing Kenny an itinerary for their tour to Japan after several requests. Kenny made his departure from the stage in Jemison, Ala. When Bill asked him to play the signature tune “Jerusalem Ridge,” Kenny decided that was that, chose not to play the tune, left the stage, and thus with those footsteps, ended an era in bluegrass music.
I had the great fortune, or misfortune depending on your perspective, to follow Kenny. Bill selected me to join the Blue Grass Boys, his first addition after Kenny’s departure. How could I ever fill such shoes? There was no way, but I gave it my best shot, and had it not been for those hours of sitting beside Kenny Baker’s records, I probably couldn’t have done what I did. Kenny made his musical mark by recording hundreds of fiddle tunes that are now emulated by fiddlers around the world including his three favorite tunes: “Freda,” from his 1972 “Kenny Baker Country” County Records album; “McClanahan’s Reel”; and “Bluegrass in the Backwoods,” from his 1977 “Frost on the Pumpkin” County Records album. His most recent releases were “Cotton Baggin’” and “Spider Bit the Baby” from Oms Records. Fiddler Blaine Sprouse joined him on both. Kenny certainly thrilled my fiddler’s heart each and every time I heard him pull the horsehair of that now stilled bow across the strings. He was laid to rest in Burdine, Ky. Give yourself a treat – buy a Kenny Baker recording and listen to a true master.
Randall Franks is an award-winning musician, singer and actor. He is best known for his role as “Officer Randy Goode” on TV’s “In the Heat of the Night” now on WGN America. His latest CD release, “An Appalachian Musical Revival,” is by www.shareamericafoundation.org. He is a member of the Atlanta Country Music Hall of Fame. He is a syndicated columnist for http://randallfranks.com/ and can be reached at rfrankscatoosa@gmail.com.