Introduction

By Chris Welch
Extract from Cream: The Legendary Sixties Supergroup
Amended Friday, 08 April 2005

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The Formation

By Chris Welch
Extract from Cream: Strange Brew
Amended Friday, 08 April 2005

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The Farewell

By Chris Welch
Extract from Cream: The Legendary Sixties Supergroup
Amended Friday, 08 April 2005

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Ginger Baker

By Chris Welch
Extract from Cream: Strange Brew
Amended Friday, 08 April 2005

Ginger Baker was born in Lewisham, South London on August 19, 1939. He grew up in neighbouring New Eltham on the borders of Sidcup and went to school in Woolwich. As a teenager he was filled with a restless energy which he employed training and competing as a racing cyclist. This undoubtedly gave him the strong leg muscles which later helped him play double bass drums with such speed. But his first instrument was the trumpet, which he played in the local Air Training Corp band. Their drummer also played with a trad jazz band led by Dick Charlesworth, and Ginger became intrigued by the idea of playing drums himself. The two lads would get out all the ATC band's military drums for fun and hammer away on them together.

Baker was also keenly interested in modern art and modern jazz, and with his flaming red hair and penchant for wearing bright green suits, he quickly became known as a rebellious beatnik. From his earliest days, despite his wild, eccentric appearance and his artistic flair, Ginger was a business like achiever, determined to try his hand at anything. In later years he would become involved in sculpture, painting, rally driving and polo.

By the age of 15 Ginger had nurtured plans to become a professional racing cyclist until he bought his first drum kit. "I was a cyclist and I wrecked my bike," recalls Ginger. "I had been into drums from a listening point of view for quite a time. I used to bang on the table with knives and forks and drive everybody mad. I used to get the kids at school dancing by banging rhythms on the school desk! They kept on at me to sit in with this band. The band wasn't very keen, but in the end I sat in and played the bollocks off their drummer. And that was the first time I'd sat on a kit. I heard one of the band turn round and say 'We've got a drummer.' and I thought, 'Hello, this is something I can do.'"

His first kit he described as "a bit alarming." It was a flimsy toy set which he bought for three pounds. He had wanted a kit that would have cost twelve pounds but he'd already spent seventy on his racing bike and his parents couldn't afford to give him any more. He finally raised the money by getting a job in commercial art working for sign writers and later in an advertising studio. Ginger formed a band which included his cousin on banjo and a couple of friends on trumpet and trombone.

Then he saw an advertisement in Melody Maker. The Storyville Jazz Men, a local trad jazz band led by Bob Wallis, needed someone to beef up their rhythm section. He played a gig with them, and despite the fact he'd only been playing a few months, got the job. At the age of 16 Baker left home, quit his day job and spent a year on the road with the band.

He acquired a more professional second hand drum kit and he built up a good reputation. He even recorded some sides with top clarinetist Acker Bilk, and was then asked to play with Terry Lightfoot, who ran one of the big name bands of the day. "Then I got fed up with my kit," recalls Ginger. "I got this great idea for using Perspex. It was like wood to work on, but it was smooth, and it would save painting the inside of the drum shell with gloss paint. So I bent the shells and shaped them over a gas stove..." Ginger laughs at the memory of his crude experiments. "I cut them all out, and pieced them together with proper drum fittings. I made it in 1961 and used it up until 1966 when I got my first Ludwig kit."

Ginger says he used the home made kit on the first two classic Graham Bond LPs 'The Sound Of '65' (for which I wrote the sleeve notes), and 'There's A Bond Between Us.'

Right from the start Ginger got his own sound and style and I remember watching fascinated along with the rest of the audience, when I first saw him play with Alexis Korner at one of the early National Jazz & Blues festivals, He was intense, passionate and played as if every beat was torn from his body. If he missed a beat or dropped a stick, the audience felt his pain and frustration, and when he reached a crescendo and a whirling epic drum solo took off, everyone shared his personal joy. If he had played the saxophone or guitar, it would doubtless have been the same experience, a battle of mind over matter. Baker told me: "The way I play—I know now, more than ever—is something I was born with. The whole approach, the way you hit the drum, is achieved by listening to the sounds you make. I could always play. When I joined the Storyville Jazz Band I told them I'd been playing for three years. In fact I had only been playing three months. "

Ginger listened avidly to early New Orleans jazz drummers like Baby Dodds who played with Louis Armstrong. "I fell in love with what he was playing. Baby Dodds was the link between western military drum techniques and African drummers. He was the man who first successfully married the two. He was the first jazz drummer."

Ginger also listened to Alton Red who drummed with Kid Ory, and Zutty Singleton, before he discovered bebop and modern jazz. As he absorbed the records of Charlie Parker and Dizzy Gillespie he heard the fluid, inventive rhythmic backing of drummer Max Roach. "He was the Guv'nor. But when I started playing trad jazz was the thing, and it was the easiest thing to play and the best music to start off with as a young drummer.

But things started to go awry when I started to play Max Roach style. As soon as this happened Terry Lightfoot nearly swallowed his clarinet. He'd say: 'I want four to the bar on the bass drum, nothing else!' So I told him to get lost."

Ginger's vigorous defence of his stylistic freedom meant he was out of a job. He'd only been with the band for six months but ended up having a row with all of them.

In 1959 he went off with guitarist Diz Disley on a three-month stint in Copenhagen, then went on a Scandinavian tour with gospel singer Sister Rosetta Tharpe. Back in England he returned home to live with his parents and found that the house next door was empty. It proved a useful hideaway, where he make as much noise as he liked. Even so, the racket coming through the walls drove his mother mad.

He was determined to study and practised drum rudiments for nine hours a day. He went to London's West End and hung out in Archer Street, then a famous meeting place for musicians looking for work. He wanted to be a professional musician, but under pressure from his parents he got a temporary job in a factory, loading trucks.

Eventually he got another band job. "I got a reading gig, and I couldn't read. I had to learn to read music in a fortnight, to get the gig. It took me a week to find out what a repeat sign meant. I couldn't figure out why I was getting to the end of a part and the band was still playing!"

By sheer perseverance Baker mastered the mysteries of arrangements and written parts sufficiently to get by and he could fake the rest.

He moved to Cricklewood in North London and within three months he met and married Liz, a charming and patient lady, who would see Ginger through the tumultuous years that lay ahead.

With the help of friends he got a job playing with Irish dance bands at the Galtimore ballroom. One of the bands played swing in the style of Stan Kenton and Shorty Rogers as well as Irish music. He studied harmony and wrote an arrangement of 'Surrey With The Fringe On Top.'

It was a corny enough piece, but it gave Ginger a great deal of satisfaction to hear a band playing his work. He played at the ballroom for nearly a year, and fitted in gigs at American air bases and a trip to Germany. His big goal in life was to break into the tight knit modern jazz community, and he eventually freelanced at Ronnie Scott's Club. "I was rather controversial," recalls Ginger. "I was always 'too loud!' But I don't like these guys that play like a metronome. I know I'm a bit of a monster. I have always been big-headed, but people whose playing I liked always liked mine, and that kept me going."

Ginger joined the Johnny Burch Octet, which he still believes is one of the best groups he ever played with. He also played with the Bert Courtley band and worked at all-night sessions at Soho's Flamingo Club. He almost landed a top job with the John Dankworth Orchestra, but many of the band had misgivings about employing such a temperamental player. Gradually he found himself frozen out of London's modern jazz circuit. It wasn't just to do with Baker's legendary temper. His passionate approach to drumming was considered too disturbing.

"In those days I played like a madman and got emotionally involved in the music. Some people don't like that. They feel they are losing control of the band. A lot of drummers just played what they heard on record. I was always playing myself. I had influences obviously but when I was playing modern jazz I was always accused of being a rock 'n' roller because I need to lay down an off-beat. But then, so did Art Blakey. They didn't like this loud drummer playing off-beats, and getting the audience clapping their hands, and dancing about. That was most uncalled for. You were supposed to sit up and listen and drink your drink. But I never considered myself a rock 'n' roller, I was always a jazzer."

The music scene was about to undergo a sea change. Big bands, and Trad and Modern jazz groups faced a new challenge from Rhythm & Blues. British musicians and fans had for years supported the revival of many aspects of American music. The whole post-war traditional jazz movement (called Dixieland in the States), had rested on the enthusiasm of a few revivalists dedicated to recreating the authentic sound of New Orleans jazz. Now there were new discoveries to be made. Chicago-style electric blues pioneered by artists like Muddy Waters, Howling Wolf, John Lee Hooker, Chuck Berry and Bo Diddley was rediscovered. All over the country aspiring singers and guitarists, tired of commercial rock 'n' roll and disillusioned with elitist jazz found themselves embarked on a blues crusade. R&B provided a wonderful opportunity to play exciting music that wasn't too complex, and would appeal to young audiences hungry for excitement. When the newly emerged Rolling Stones played in a tent at the 1963 National Jazz & Blues Festival at Richmond, the audience literally ran away from the big stage where Acker Bilk was playing, to seize upon the sensational new sounds of Mick Jagger, Keith Richards, Brian Jones, Charlie Watts and Bill Wyman.

As a local newspaper reporter I had the great good fortune to be present at this historic moment. It was on a hot weekend in August when Rhythm & Blues achieved its great British break through. In my review I announced:

"Right from the first appearance by a little known Liverpool group The Mastersounds, it was clear the jazz bands were going to take second place in popularity to the savage beat of the R&B bands. Come Sunday evening, during the last few hours of the festival, a seething mass of fans jammed in a marquee at the rear of the grounds cheered and cheered again Richmond's own Rolling Stones, while Mr.Acker Bilk's band plunked dutifully on the main stage before docile jazz fans seated in neat rows. The compere for the show, Bill Carey secretary of the National Jazz Federation, viewed the swaying masses waiting impatiently for the Stones to set up their equipment. The expression on his face changed from delight to amazement, then bewilderment and worry. 'Shake it up,' he kept saying to the slow handclapping, yelling crowd. 'But look after yourselves. If anyone climbs on stage we will stop the show. If anybody faints pass them out over your heads."

As The Stones, all long hair, pouts and wiggles, tore into 'Come On' and 'I'm A Hog For Your Baby,' trad jazz with its clanking banjos became a distant memory. Mick Jagger shaking his tousled mass of hair and a pair of battered maracas had to be a more exciting spectacle than portly gentlemen studiously blowing clarinets.

The same day I saw the Cyril Davies All-Stars, Graham Bond with Ginger Baker, Long John Baldry and Georgie Fame & The Blue Flames. Everyone present was smitten by the "new" music and I wrote:

"It was easy to see why these new groups were so enormously successful at what was supposed to be a jazz festival. Most of the jazz offerings were polite, prissy and depressingly unoriginal. It may have been saddening for jazz fans to see many of their own number, hard-to-please beatniks, and Richmond's teenagers, now the first citizens of R&B, deserting the scholarly gentlemen of jazz in favour of the rebellious barbarians of rhythm and blues. But for this situation, jazzmen have only themselves to blame, having deserted the beat for so long, Bill Carey was shouting at the end of the festival: 'This has been rhythm and blues and you have made the Rolling Stones the stars of the festival!'"

Another new star at the festival as far as I was concerned was drummer Baker. The first impression I had of him was of a red haired kid, grinning and pounding away a huge ride cymbal, and tearing into his big old snare drum as if his life depended on it. He had become involved in R&B when he joined Alexis Korner's Blues Incorporated in August 1962, taking over the drum chair on the recommendation of Charlie Watts. Ginger told me later: "Charlie Watts is a nice guy and a very good player. Alexis Korner helped me become a non-monster."

Another musician who liked helped, and understood Baker, was modern jazz drummer the late great Phil Seamen. He came to hear Ginger one night and later they practised together and talked. Ginger would always pay tribute to Phil as one of the greatest jazz drummers of all time, and years later, after the success of Cream, he would take active steps to help revive Seamen's career.

Recalls Ginger: "Phil heard me play in the All-Niter Club which used to be the Flamingo on Wardour Street. Tubby Hayes (the sax player), had apparently been in there and heard me and ran over to Ronnie Scott's Club and told Phil to come down and hear me. When I got off stage I was suddenly confronted by my hero."

In February 1963 Ginger left Alexis with Graham Bond and Jack Bruce to form the Graham Bond Organisation. In the sequence of events, Bond had joined Blues Incorporated when Cyril Davies left to form his own band. (Cyril, one of the great blues harp players, died suddenly in 1964). Bond had been with the band for three months when one night they did a gig in Manchester which featured just Bond, Bruce and Baker. They went down a storm and in March 1963 they gave in their notice and quit Alexis to form the new band. Tenor sax man Dick Heckstall-Smith joined six months later and a classic British R&B band was born.

Ginger stayed with Bond for three and half years, until 1966 and the formation of Cream. The Bond years were tremendously exciting. Bill Bruford, drummer with Yes, one of the innovative bands of the Seventies, cited the band's instrumental recording of 'Wade In The Water' as crucially important. Apart from the passionate sax and keyboard playing, the rhythm section proved a revelation, with Jack Bruce creating an aggressive new sound on amplified 6-string bass guitar, and Baker attacking his kit with cataclysmic force. The whole piece swung with a fervour unknown in British jazz, and it was probably the first true jazz-rock fusion record.