Funeral services are being held today (July 12) in Letcher County, Kentucky for master fiddler Kenny Baker, who played with Bill Monroe and the Blue Grass Boys for many years and was subsequently part of a fiddle-dobro duo with Josh Graves for more than 20 years (1984-2006). Baker died July 8 at 85, following a stroke.

“The only way to catch up with and understand Bill Monroe’s own feeling that Kenny Baker is the ‘greatest fiddler in the world’ is to listen to Kenny’s playing – to his power, his control, his intonation and articulation, and most of all to his artistic intentions,” wrote Thomas Adler in the liner notes to Kenny Baker Country (1976), one of a dozen albums Baker recorded on the County Records label.

Widely regarded as a musician’s musician, Baker mentored and influenced other players with his smooth, long-bow fiddling style. “All your great fiddle players in Nashville, when they heard Kenny, they knew there was a lot more to be had with a fiddle, a lot more to learn,” Ronnie Eldridge, a close friend of Baker, told The Lexington Herald-Leader in Kentucky.

During his illustrious career, Baker also toured with Graves, Jesse McReynolds and Eddie & Martha Adcock as the Masters and recorded sessions with such notable artists as Jimmy Martin, The Osborne Brothers, Mark O’Connor, Mac Wiseman and Dry Branch Fire Squad (with whom his son, Johnny Baker, formerly played guitar and sang tenor).

Although Kenny Baker was the son and grandson of old-time fiddlers and picked up the fiddle as a youngster, he also played the guitar for a while, and played both it and the fiddle in Don Gibson’s country band from 1953 until he started his first stint with Bill Monroe in 1957. While he spent much of his working life as a coal miner (and playing at barn dances on weekends) and living in Kentucky, the bluegrass state, Bob Wills’ western swing and Stephane Grapelli’s jazz style appealed to Baker early on.

In addition to his fine musicianship, Baker is credited with writing or co-composing nearly 100 tunes. Among them are “Baker’s Breakdown,” “Big Sandy River,” “Farmyard Swing,” “Frost on the Pumpkin” and “Windy City Rag.” Baker received a National Heritage Fellowship from the national Endowment for the Arts in 1993 and was inducted into the Bluegrass Music Hall of Fame in Owensboro, Kentucky in 1999.