Ginger Baker

In the adulation that outlasted Cream [see entry], Ginger Baker was touted as a great drummer. "Toad," his lengthy live showcase, paved the way for a decade of heavy-metal drum solos, and he was one of the first rock drummers to incorporate third world rhythms into his style. He has since expanded his palette even further to incorporate jazz.

As a teenager Baker played with traditional jazz bands, but he got his first taste of R&B with Alexis Korner’s Blues Incorporated when Charlie Watts left the group to join the fledgling Rolling Stones in 1962. A year later Baker and two other group members, singer Graham Bond and bassist Jack Bruce, formed the Graham Bond Organisation. He and Bruce remained until forming Cream with Eric Clapton in mid-1966. Over the course of two-plus years, Cream became a supergroup. After Cream split up in November 1968, Baker joined the short-lived Blind Faith [see entry].

Ginger Baker’s Air Force debuted in January 1970. The percussion-dominated group was loosely structured, both in arrangements and personnel, which in various permutations included Stevie Winwood, Rick Grech, Bond, Denny Laine, and Remi Kabaka, one of three full-time drummers. Another drummer, Phil Seaman, and the members of Air Force encouraged Baker’s growing interest in African music, and in 1971 he moved to Lagos, Nigeria, to build the first 16-track studio in West Africa. For the next few years he played with local talent, formed the group Salt, and ran his recording studio. Paul McCartney recorded Band on the Run there in 1973, by which time Baker had been musically inactive for many months. In 1974 he reemerged with the Baker-Gurvitz Army, which recorded three jazz-rock albums before disbanding in the late ’70s. By then Baker was reportedly spending a lot of his time playing polo.

In the early ’80s Baker moved to Milan, Italy, where he signed with CGD Records, formed a band with American musicians, and set up a drum school in a small mountain village. But mostly he ran an olive farm and tended to his health, for he’d only recently kicked a 21-year heroin addiction. In 1986 producer Bill Laswell coaxed the drummer to play on Public Image Ltd.’s Album. Baker relocated to California, then to Denver, Colorado, and recorded several LPs with Laswell behind the board and occasionally on bass. Baker has also teamed up with Masters of Reality for two albums to date, and in 1994 he released Around the Next Dream with Bruce and Gary Moore (Thin Lizzy). In 1993 Cream was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame; at the ceremony, Baker, Clapton, and Bruce reunited for the first time since 1968 to perform some Cream songs.

In the mid- to late ’90s, Baker began pushing his exploration of jazz further. In 1994 he formed the Ginger Baker Trio with bassist Charlie Haden and guitarist Bill Frisell and released Going Back Home, followed by Falling Off the Roof two years later. Baker also initiated the formation of the DJ Q20 (Denver Jazz Quintet-to-Octet) in 1995. Unfortunately, the group’s recording sessions were interrupted by Baker’s undergoing shoulder surgery. The album, Coward of the County, finally came out in 1999, around the time Baker relocated again, this time to South Africa.

from The Rolling Stone Encyclopedia of Rock & Roll (Simon & Schuster, 2001)