“In their artistic practices, the NEA National Heritage Fellows tell their own stories on their own terms. They pass their skills and knowledge to others through mentorship and teaching,” said NEA Chair Maria Rosario Jackson, PhD. “These honorees are not only sustaining the cultural history of their art form and of their community, they are also enriching our nation as a whole.”

A sought-after musician, Cleveland, 41, has also performed with such noted artists as Vince Gill, J.D. Crowe and the New South, The Kruger Brothers, Tim O’Brien, Andy Statman, and Marty Stuart, among others. “He plays fearless and it’s intoxicating to play with him because he makes you play fearless,” says Gill. “He takes no prisoners but he plays with a restraint and a soul. He plays without abandon. It’s wicked to see how much he pulls out of a bow. He’s untouchable.”

Here’s a link to a recording of Michael Cleveland performing “Tall Fiddler”: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zcwx6AifG7Q.

A film celebrating the National Endowment for the Arts 2022 class of artists and tradition bearers premieres this fall on arts.gov, where more information on the NEA National Heritage Fellowship and a complete list of recipients can also be found.

“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.

Entitled Mountain Fiddler, the album originally released in 1978, also features Country Gentlemen band members Doyle Lawson on guitar, James Bailey on banjo, and Spider Gilliam on bass fiddle. The album was produced by Barry Poss, who later became founder and president of Sugar Hill Records. Sen. Byrd was reportedly persuaded to make a commercial recording of his music after he recorded some fiddle tunes for the Library of Congress in 1977. The album’s tracks include “Red Bird,” “Turkey In The Straw,” There’s More Pretty Girls Than One,” “Cripple Creek,” “Forked Deer,” “Don’t Let Your Sweet Love Die,” “Cumberland Gap,” “Rye Whisky,” “Durang’s Hornpipe,” “Roving Gambler,” “Old Joe Clark,” “Wish I Had Stayed In The Wagon Yard,” “Come Sundown She’ll Be Gone,” and “Will The Circle Be Unbroken.”

Inspired by Clark Kessinger and other musicians in the Mountain State that he called home, Byrd acquired his love of fiddling at an early age. And old-time rural string music remained a lifelong passion. The Senator was known to keep a fiddle in his office and break it out from time to time.