(Prog/Fusion/R&B) Ginger Baker - Live in London 2009 CD+DVD - 2011, WavPack (iso.wv), lossless

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I'm old enough to remember seeing Ginger Baker playing in jazz groups, well before he became famous worldwide as a member of Cream. So I got this album in the hope that it would include some jazz, especially with the participation of Pete King, one of Britain's finest saxophonists.

And there is some jazz on this album. It is a kind of jazz-rock - yet not the sort of jazz-fusion where rock beats are added to jazz, but a mixture of rock guitars and drums with jazz saxophone. Pete King is the main attraction on such jazz numbers as Thelonious Monk's Bemsha Swing and Wayne Shorter's Footprints, soloing with swirling invention, although the clangorous guitars tend to get in the way on Footprints. And King lays out for rockier tunes like Rabbir Run.

The concert at London's Jazz Cafe was to celebrate Ginger Baker's 70th birthday. One might have expected him to do a drum solo but he only plays a brief and rather unexciting solo on the Cream's Sweet Wine and joins in the African rhythms laid down by percussionist Abbas Dodoo in the Nigerian folk song Iko Beiya.

Some items show signs of minimal rehearsal - for example in Sweet Wine, where the vocals sound poorly harmonised. Another drawback is the immensely drawn-out introduction from Ginger's grand-daughter and then Ginger himself, rambling at length for a five-minute segment that won't repay playing more than once.

However, there is a bonus: the inclusion of a DVD of the same tunes, with the pleasant novelty of cameras that don't move about too frequently. Like the CD, this also includes the unexpected arrival of Stevie Winwood (misspelt Windwood in the DVD credits) to play a Caribbean-style Happy Birthday.

So this package is a mixed bag, and only parts will probably appeal to jazz lovers. However, it's an interesting aural and visual record of an event recalling some of the many facets of Ginger Baker's multifarious career.

Tony Augarde

DISC ONE-AUDIO CD
Recorded live at The Jazz Cafe, London, 4th November 2009.

Ginger Baker - born Peter Edward Baker in Lewisham, South London, on August 19th, 1939 - is inarguably one of the truly great drummers to emerge from the UK in the remarkable explosion of Jazz and Blues talent in the 1950s and 60s. His name is forever etched into Rock history because of his brief tenure as one third of the original Rock 'power trio', Cream, filling the percussive role in the awesome eternal Rock triangle alongside Jack Bruce on bass and Eric Clapton on guitar, a remarkable, incandescent combo who changed the face of Rock music in the 1960s. Of course, there is so much more to Ginger's story than that, a picaresque tale that incorporates heroin addiction, three marriages, the loss and eventual recovery of his personal fortune, a life-long love of Jazz and the discovery and immersion in the music of Africa, and, perhaps most bizarre of all, his passion for that most un-rock and roll sports of all, polo.

Born on the cusp of the outbreak of the second world war, reaching adolescence in the 'Austerity Britain' of the still-rationed London of the late forties and early fifties, and then turning on to Jazz and Blues as the fifties wore on, Baker fell under the influential thrall of the British Jazz drumming legend, Phil Seaman. Seaman was one of the most talented players of his time, coming up through the Big Band era and on into the fifties, when his aggressive, intense, but cultured style won him international acclaim. However, Seaman was an individual whose talent went hand in hand with personal demons in the shape of alcohol and heroin addictions, which made him temperamentally brittle and acutely unpleasant company at times. Something of a template, then for the Wild Man Rock drummer that Ginger Baker would become. Seaman actually gave Baker drum lessons, and clearly had an indelible influence on Baker's style.

Baker's reputation began in earnest as part of the late Alexis Korner's band, Blues Incorporated, when he replaced none other than Charlie Watts on the drum stool. Korner is rightfully seen as the Godfather of the British Blues and R&B scene of the late fifties and early sixties, his bands being something of a crucible where nascent talent was forged and fostered. As a member of the band, he worked with the remarkable Graham Bond, one of the great keyboard players of the era (and practitioner of Black Magic Arts, to boot), as well as bass player Jack Bruce. When the three jammed with sax player Dick Heckstall-Smith, the response was so strong that the first seeds of a new project, featuring Bond / Bruce / Baker and Heckstall-Smith were planted, which would soon come to fruition in the shape of The Graham Bond Organisation. The band were a tremendous live attraction, and, although they had a solid following, which culminated in their landing a record deal, their studio work failed to reproduce their live fervour. The relationship between Baker and Bruce was tempestuous, to say the least, and eventually Baker (the de facto leader of the Graham Bond Organisation) fired Bruce, who hooked up for a while with John Mayall's Bluesbreakers. before playing sessions, and for the recording of the single Pretty Flamingo, Manfred Mann. It was now 1966, and the Organisation were frankly going nowhere. When the idea of working with Eric Clapton was presented to Baker, he was enthused; however, Clapton's insistence on working with Jack Bruce was a difficult notion for Baker to take in, but reluctantly, he agreed.

In a remarkable period of just under three years, Cream became a global phenomenon, mixing innovative ensemble playing with unusual song material and in so doing driving a wedge between the worlds of ephemeral 'Pop' music and the whole 'Rock' counter-culture. And then some. However, the internal friction within the band was simply a pressure cooker waiting to explode, and the band split in November 1968.

Baker then joined up with Clapton and Stevie Winwood in the short-lived 'supergroup', Blind Faith. The Blind Faith story probably warrants a book in itself; the band lasted a mere seven months, supported the Rolling Stones in Hyde Park when another ex-Bluesbreaker, Mick Taylor, made his debut with Jagger & co, and released one album, which sold massively and earned Baker a lot of money. However, the band sundered, with Clapton opting, for a short time at least, for the relative anonymity of playing in Delaney and Bonnie Bramlett's band. Baker then formed Air Force, another would-be supergroup, that also featured, for a while, his mentor Phil Seaman, and Graham Bond. Air Force was simply too eclectic a combo to survive, despite starting promisingly with a hit single, Man of Constant Sorrow.

By the early seventies, with reissues of Cream albums selling well, Baker decided to indulge his love of African rhythms by setting up a studio in Lagos, Nigeria. Of the notable artists to record there were Fela Kuti, and Paul McCartney & Wings. He also busied himself recording a solo album called Stratavarious, and by 1974, formed the Baker-Gurvitz Army, with brothers Adrian and Paul Gurvitz, which lasted about three years. After that, there was something of a wilderness period, when Baker tried various odd bail projects, such as setting up a trans-Saharan trucking company. Baker re-emerged in the mid-eighties, working on a project with Material main man Bill Laswell. More surprising still was his appearing on Public Image Limited's Album on 1986, and in the late eighties, Baker also had projects such as Ginger Baker's African Force and Middle Passage.

He returned to the Rock power trio format as part of BBM, alongside Jack Bruce and Irish Blues-Rocker Gary Moore. In May, 2005, many a Rock Fan's dreams were fulfilled when Cream reformed for some triumphant shows at the Albert Hall in London and Madison Square Garden in New York. Interest in the band had remained undimmed for the three and a half decades since their initial split.

This CD and DVD collection- recorded at London's venerable Jazz Cafe on November 4th 2009 (a cool locale for the still-vibrant drummer, who had recently just turned seventy) sees Baker fronting a band that features Chris Goss (guitar). Abbas Dodoo (African percussion), Pete King (alto saxophone), Jonas Hellborg (bass) and Baker's daughter Leda on guitar in addition to Baker's powerhouse drumming. Baker's grand-daughter, Zara, does the introduction, too. Goss worked with Baker in the Masters of Reality back in 1993. Pete King is a veteran of the London Soho Jazz scene of the 1950s, and bass player Hellborg is noted player in his own right, and had worked with Baker back in the Material days in the mid-1980s. Joining Baker that evening was Stevie Winwood, but unfortunately, because of contractual issues, his performances cannot be included. Over the course of the fifty minutes or so of this concert recording, we get a feast of incisive improvisational playing, wherein Baker and especially sax man King roll back the years in a joyous celebration of the sheer love of music. Opener Alamout fizzes and sparkles, with Goss playing some tasteful power chords while Baker and Dudu keep an insistent rhythmic pulse going. Hellborg's bass is supple and driving. Ants In The Kitchen, which originally on the Sunrise on the Sufferbus album by Masters of Reality back in 1993, has something of the Cream hard rock riffing about it - a short, but refreshingly Blues-rocking blast from Baker's relatively recent past. Bemsha Swing is a more improvised stroll, with King again supplying some superb sax flourishes, and Hellborg adds some imperious bass soloing. The sulphurous Rabbit Run is a slow-burning delight, again an item from the Masters of Reality era. The feel is of classic late 60's Blues-Rock, with a fine guitar solo that peels away like slowly splintering wood. Footprints is another compulsive piece, a Wayne Shorter piece from Baker's formative years. Cream's Sweet Wine is given a punchy workout, and Iko Beiya, a Nigerian Folk song, apparently, closes the album, with a rare Baker vocal.

Live At The Jazz Cafe is a tremendous reminder that Ginger Baker remains a mercurial talent, one of British Rock music's great characters, and above all, one of the finest musicians that British Rock music has produced. An enjoyable romp through an eclectic mix of styles!

ALAN ROBINSON, December 2010

Ginger Baker - Drums
Chris Goss, Leda Baker - Guitars
Abbas Dodoo - African percussion
Pete King - Alto sax
Jonas Hellborg - Bass