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GINGER BAKER

GINGER BAKER R.I.P. 1939 - 2019

“If he’d been born earlier, he’d have been a pirate.”

– Jay Bulger (director of ‘Beware of Mr. Baker’) whose nose Ginger broke during the filming

Ginger Baker, one of the most innovative and influential drummers in rock music, has died on October 6, 2019 at the age of 80. In September 2019, the family of Ginger Baker announced that he was critically ill and asked to keep him in their prayers. A co-founder of Cream, he also played with Blind Faith, Hawkwind and Fela Kuti in a long and varied career. His style combined the lyricism of jazz with the crude power of rock. One critic said watching him was like witnessing “a human combine harvester”. Nicknamed Ginger for his flaming red hair, he was also a temperamental and argumentative figure, whose behaviour frequently led to on-stage punch-ups.

One of rock’s first “supergroups”, Cream (together with Jack Bruce and Eric Clapton) fused blues and psychedelia to dazzling effect on songs like Strange Brew, Sunshine of Your Love, Badge and I Feel Free. They sold more than 35 million albums and were awarded the world’s first ever platinum disc for their LP Wheels of Fire. Along with the Jimi Hendrix Experience, the band expanded the vocabulary of heavy rock, especially during their incendiary live shows, where the three musicians would stretch simple riffs into long, exploratory improvisations. - BBC

It has always struck me that it was Ginger's humour that produced this Victorian Music Hall joke song . . . . . .I knew it word perfect and sang it in dedication to Ginger throughout my teenage years, mostly hanging about with the now legendary drummer himself, Johnny Marter with whom I would wander the village singing and playing guitar til our fingers bled! He became, as well as having been one of my dearest friends, one of the best natural drummers it has ever been my privilege to know. He could follow and match Ginger without difficulty.