Kenny Baker, right, with Bill Monroe backstage at the Hammersmith Odeon, London, in May 1975.
When the time came for Bill Monroe to introduce his Blue Grass Boys to the audience, he habitually described Kenny Baker as "the greatest fiddler in bluegrass". Perhaps a bandleader could do no less, but Baker, who has died aged 85, was held in equally high regard by bluegrass fans and, in particular, by other musicians.
"I have seen and heard fiddlers from New England to Florida, and from the Virginia coast to Missouri and the Ozarks playing Kenny's tunes," wrote David Freeman, the owner of County Records. County released a dozen of Baker's albums, recordings that became primers of bluegrass fiddling for the novice and repositories of new tunes and arrangements for the more experienced. Many instrumental tunes on Monroe's albums, too, were admired for Baker's intricate and hard-driving playing. It is doubtful if any other fiddler in this genre has wielded such influence.
The son and grandson of old-time fiddlers, Baker grew up in the coalmining region of Wise County, Virginia, and adjoining Letcher County, Kentucky. After serving in the US navy in the second world war, he returned to live in Jenkins, Kentucky, and took a mining job himself, playing only at local functions, where he was spotted and hired in 1953 by the popular country singer Don Gibson.
During his first spell with Monroe, from 1956 to 1958, he recorded two notable instrumentals, Panhandle Country and Scotland, twin-fiddling with Bobby Hicks. He returned to mining, rejoining Monroe from 1961 to 1963, but by 1968, with his children grown up, he felt free to re-enlist with Monroe for a third time. He remained a fixture, the one rock in the fast-moving stream of Monroe's hirings and firings, for 16 years.
During this period he made his remarkable albums for County, sometimes paired with other fiddlers such as Joe Greene, Hicks or Howdy Forrester, but usually, and most characteristically, playing solo with a small group, often derived from the current lineup of the Blue Grass Boys, and on one occasion including the leader himself, for the 1976 album Kenny Baker Plays Bill Monroe. This and the 1972 Monroe album Uncle Pen were important recordings for both men, for over the years Monroe had devoted himself to passing on to Baker old tunes he had learned from his uncle Pen Vandiver. "He told me," said Baker, "he was saving them for the right fiddler, the man he thought could do them right."
What other fiddlers valued in Baker, however, was more than just his ability to give life to Monroe's memories of all-but-lost tunes. He had absorbed as a young man the jazz fiddling of Stéphane Grappelli and the jazz-influenced western swing sounds emanating from Texas, and his mature fiddling in the bluegrass idiom – which, he liked to say, "is nothing but a hillbilly version of jazz" – reflected these models in its drive, precision, inventiveness and grace.
Though the fiddle, which he took up at the age of eight, had been his first instrument, during much of Baker's youth he preferred the guitar, learning from his older brother Carl. A sometimes reticent and private man, Baker did not exploit this other talent, and many were unaware of it, but fortunately it was preserved on a couple of delightful albums made in the early 1970s with the steel guitar player Josh Graves.
In October 1984, Baker left the Blue Grass Boys for the last time. At a show in Alabama, asked by Monroe to play Jerusalem Ridge, a favourite of many fans, Baker refused and walked off stage. No doubt there was more to it than boredom. Possibly Baker had become terminally dissatisfied with the low wages Monroe offered even valued sidemen. It would be a decade before the two men publicly made their peace. Meanwhile, Baker joined Graves, the mandolinist Jesse McReynolds and the banjoist Eddie Adcock in a band defiantly named the Masters.
In 1993 he received a National Heritage fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts, and in 1999 he was elected to the Bluegrass Music Hall of Honor.
He is survived by his wife, Audrey, his sons, Kenneth Jr and Johnnie, numerous grandchildren and great-grandchildren, and Joan Shagan, his companion of many years.
• Kenny Baker, bluegrass musician, born 26 June 1926; died 8 July 2011
"I have seen and heard fiddlers from New England to Florida, and from the Virginia coast to Missouri and the Ozarks playing Kenny's tunes," wrote David Freeman, the owner of County Records. County released a dozen of Baker's albums, recordings that became primers of bluegrass fiddling for the novice and repositories of new tunes and arrangements for the more experienced. Many instrumental tunes on Monroe's albums, too, were admired for Baker's intricate and hard-driving playing. It is doubtful if any other fiddler in this genre has wielded such influence.
The son and grandson of old-time fiddlers, Baker grew up in the coalmining region of Wise County, Virginia, and adjoining Letcher County, Kentucky. After serving in the US navy in the second world war, he returned to live in Jenkins, Kentucky, and took a mining job himself, playing only at local functions, where he was spotted and hired in 1953 by the popular country singer Don Gibson.
During his first spell with Monroe, from 1956 to 1958, he recorded two notable instrumentals, Panhandle Country and Scotland, twin-fiddling with Bobby Hicks. He returned to mining, rejoining Monroe from 1961 to 1963, but by 1968, with his children grown up, he felt free to re-enlist with Monroe for a third time. He remained a fixture, the one rock in the fast-moving stream of Monroe's hirings and firings, for 16 years.
During this period he made his remarkable albums for County, sometimes paired with other fiddlers such as Joe Greene, Hicks or Howdy Forrester, but usually, and most characteristically, playing solo with a small group, often derived from the current lineup of the Blue Grass Boys, and on one occasion including the leader himself, for the 1976 album Kenny Baker Plays Bill Monroe. This and the 1972 Monroe album Uncle Pen were important recordings for both men, for over the years Monroe had devoted himself to passing on to Baker old tunes he had learned from his uncle Pen Vandiver. "He told me," said Baker, "he was saving them for the right fiddler, the man he thought could do them right."
What other fiddlers valued in Baker, however, was more than just his ability to give life to Monroe's memories of all-but-lost tunes. He had absorbed as a young man the jazz fiddling of Stéphane Grappelli and the jazz-influenced western swing sounds emanating from Texas, and his mature fiddling in the bluegrass idiom – which, he liked to say, "is nothing but a hillbilly version of jazz" – reflected these models in its drive, precision, inventiveness and grace.
Though the fiddle, which he took up at the age of eight, had been his first instrument, during much of Baker's youth he preferred the guitar, learning from his older brother Carl. A sometimes reticent and private man, Baker did not exploit this other talent, and many were unaware of it, but fortunately it was preserved on a couple of delightful albums made in the early 1970s with the steel guitar player Josh Graves.
In October 1984, Baker left the Blue Grass Boys for the last time. At a show in Alabama, asked by Monroe to play Jerusalem Ridge, a favourite of many fans, Baker refused and walked off stage. No doubt there was more to it than boredom. Possibly Baker had become terminally dissatisfied with the low wages Monroe offered even valued sidemen. It would be a decade before the two men publicly made their peace. Meanwhile, Baker joined Graves, the mandolinist Jesse McReynolds and the banjoist Eddie Adcock in a band defiantly named the Masters.
In 1993 he received a National Heritage fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts, and in 1999 he was elected to the Bluegrass Music Hall of Honor.
He is survived by his wife, Audrey, his sons, Kenneth Jr and Johnnie, numerous grandchildren and great-grandchildren, and Joan Shagan, his companion of many years.
• Kenny Baker, bluegrass musician, born 26 June 1926; died 8 July 2011
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