Baker should know because he has been entrenched in the genre since a boy and has been bringing radio listeners the music since 2010, his Confessing the Blues program now in syndication through 53 affiliates in 10 countries.
Last month Baker, part of the Good Morning Lake Country talk show team on WPTM, received news his blues show was named Best International Blues Show in an international poll by the UK-based Blues Matters Magazine, one of the oldest in the country.
“I was taken aback,” Baker said Monday. “I was humbled and proud.”
Baker began Confessing the Blues in March of 2010 but his connection with the music goes back to his boyhood in Pitt County where his grandfather, a farmer, also ran a country store. It was at that store on weekends the farmhands would gather and play Son House and Howlin' Wolf. “I really came to find it satisfying and dug it. I stuck with it when most blues fans found it through rock and roll, Led Zeppelin and the Rolling Stones.”
A poster of some of today's current acts.
In his journey through the blues and the people he has met who love the genre, he has come to realize, “Blues fans are generally the happiest people on earth. The blues are songs about life and living, taking about it's high points and low points.”
The umbrella that shelters the music, Baker is, is huge. “It's a pretty big umbrella. It's a pretty wide umbrella. It's got a lot of funk and soul. The blues can come from the Delta and they come from the Muscle Shoals horn sound.”
It was always Baker's dream to have a blues radio show if he ever got back in radio. Born in Pitt County, he moved to the Roanoke Valley in 1970.
He went to North Carolina State University and has held a number of jobs in a number of cities, including Richmond and Louisville where he was a shift supervisor at LG&E.
In 2007 he came back to the Roanoke Valley. In 2009 he got into local radio and began thinking about a blues program. “I really didn't have any intention for it to be a syndicated show.”
He saw it as a way to continue the vibe created by Johnny Draper's Beach Blast program on WTRG, which ends at 9 p.m. Fridays. “I felt like a void was there. There is a relationship between the two. It is really close.”
He was told, however, by radio professionals, it wouldn't work. After the first 90 days it was carried on two of WTRG's sister stations.
Now it is heard on 53 affiliates in 10 countries that include Canada, Russia, New Zeland and more, as well as 10 to 12 states in the United States.
To make Confessing the Blues become a popular international blues show took work, Baker said. “I sent out 800 letters and demos.”
Some decided to run the show. Others didn't. The show is aired on Internet stations as well as terrestrial radio, which is a station like WTRG. The stations Confessing the Blues airs on cross all formats, including Russia Speaks, a pro-democracy talk show in Russia that is heavily monitored by the government.
In all, conservative estimates show his program reaches some 1.5 million listeners and there are only two blues shows that have more affiliates, one being actor Dan Akroyd's show.
Baker does it for the love of the blues. “It's certainly not a financial gain. It's more of a passion,” he said.
It takes 30 to 40 hours of work to put the three-hour show together.
The music is of current blues artists. “It's all fresh,” he said. “These are artists who are trying to make a living. I don't do a whole lot of flashback.”
They include artists like guitar prodigy Quinn Sullivan, artists like 25-year-old Samantha Fish and Sugaray Rayford.
Baker is pleased the show has taken off like it has. “I've been fortunate to interview some of the biggest names in the industry.”
