Bonnie Raitt got her first guitar when she was only 8 years old, according to her official site. The instrument had been a Christmas present. Before that she had been more interested in the piano, but her grandfather, who knew how to play Hawaiian lap steel guitar, taught her a few chords, which inspired her to take up the guitar, per Rolling Stone magazine.
Another important early influence was the album "Blues at Newport 1963," which sparked her interest in that genre of music and in playing slide guitar. During the summers, Raitt learned about the rising folk music scene as well as current songs of protest from her summer camp counselors. Still, music was a pastime for her, not a vocation. She went to a Quaker high school in Poughkeepsie, New York, and then headed to Cambridge, Massachusetts for college. There she studied at Radcliffe College, which was the all-women school associated with Harvard College.
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