1 DAVID N. BAKER NEA Jazz Master (2000) Interviewee
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1 Funding for the Smithsonian Jazz Oral History Program NEA Jazz Master interview was provided by the National Endowment for the Arts. DAVID N. BAKER NEA Jazz Master (2000) Interviewee: David Baker (December 21, 1931 - ) Interviewer: Lida Baker with recording engineer Ken Kimery Date: June 19, 20, and 21, 2000 Repository: Archives Center, National Museum of American History, Smithsonian Institution Description: Transcript, 163 pp. Lida: This is Monday morning, June 19th, 2000. This is tape number one of the Smithsonian Jazz Oral History Project interview with David Baker. The interview is being conducted in Bloomington, Indiana, [in] Mr. Baker’s home. Let’s start with when and where you were born. David: [I was] born in Indianapolis, December 21st, 1931, on the east side, where I spent almost all my – when I lived in Indianapolis, most of my childhood life on the east side. I was born in 24th and Arsenal, which is near Douglas Park and near where many of the jazz musicians lived. The Montgomery’s lived on that side of town. Freddie Hubbard, much later, on that side of town. And Russell Webster, who would be a local celebrity and wonderful player. [He] used to be a babysitter for us, even though he was not that much older. Gene Fowlkes also lived in that same block on 24th and Arsenal. Then we moved to various other places on the east side of Indianapolis, almost always never more than a block or two blocks away from where we had just moved, simply because families pretty much stayed on the same side of town; and if they moved, it was maybe to a larger place, or because the rent was more exorbitant, or something. Lida: Tell us about your mother and father and your family life when you were small. For additional information contact the Archives Center at 202.633.3270 or [email protected] 2 David: I lost my mother when I was four years old. She died of what at that time was called consumption. In retrospect we know that it’s TB, tuberculosis. I was four years old. My sister was two years old. And a stillbirth or died very young [was] a brother called Michael. My mother – my recollections of her are reinforced by [the fact] that she was a very meticulous lady. I look at the pictures now of my sister and I as children, and all the pictures show us with little white outfits on, standing on our tricycles or whatever. So it tells me that. I have distinct memories of my mother chastising me when I was at age four, shortly before she died, for coming in just absolutely filthy in the afternoon. Then she found out I was helping the coal man put the coal into the chute that goes downstairs, and I remember her telling me she was sorry. “Muddy [mommy], muddy's [mommy's] sorry,” I remember [her saying]. I don't have a lot of memories. I have that memory of her then, and I have a memory of her the night she died. I remember she hemorrhaged, and I remember her standing with her back against the wall, sliding down and sitting on the floor, reciting the 23rd Psalm. Those are really the only distinct memories I have of my mother. My dad had moved to Indianapolis in roughly 1928. He’d been born in Kansas City, and . Lida: Missouri or Kansas? David: Kansas City, Missouri . and went to school at Hampton University in Hampton, Virginia, and had a degree in carpentry. [He] moved to Indianapolis. I have no notion what transpired across those years, except he met my mother. He worked for Goodrich Tire Company at the time. I remember that. We went through the latter part of the Depression – this is probably 1933 or 1934 – and I can remember a whole lot of times when we would have – my grandmother would go across the street to Douglas Park and pick dandelion greens. We’d have dandelion greens and just enough of a piece of bacon so that it had some kind of flavor. And I can remember a lot of days when we didn’t have meals at all. This was a time when it was really rough, even though black people at the time – or “coloreds,” as we were called at that time – used to say they didn’t know there was a Depression, because there wasn’t anything different from what it had already been. But my dad very quickly realized that he was not going to have a real job in carpentry in Indianapolis, simply because it was a closed shop. Lida: Racially closed? David: Yeah, racially closed. Dad ultimately did as many blacks at the time would do. [He] went into public service. He worked for the post office, as did two of my uncles, who also worked at the post office. Dad then was drafted into the Army when I was in For additional information contact the Archives Center at 202.633.3270 or [email protected] 3 junior high school – I mean into the Navy, where he served first in San Diego and then at Hampton. So he ended up back at Hampton Institute. It was across this period that we saw Indianapolis, that I became aware of my environment, the fact that it was an environment which was almost exclusively colored people. The only white people I had any contact with were – during those years – were the people who owned the store where everybody always had a “can I charge it?” I forget what they used to call it. You ran a bill. And the people who owned the hardware store – Armin Graul – and the insurance men. You played games with the insurance men. “We ain’t home.” Pull the shades when it was time for them to collect their 50 cents or quarter or whatever it was, across that time. So, basically, that’s it. When my mother died – by the time I was seven, my dad remarried. When he remarried, we moved about 10 blocks from where we were already living. My stepmother already had a son named Archie Tuft. We called him Tuffy. So we became a part of that family, even though we were – my mother had made [her mother] my grandmother promise to raise us. We actually went to court. Dad actually went to court, and of course they were not going to overturn a parental right. So we would spend weekends with my aunt, my Aunt Evelyn, who was my mother’s younger sister. I still maintain a very close relationship with her. She would take us to the movies, and inevitably I would get sick on the streetcar, because I have motion sickness. She’d have to pay the tokens three or four times so I could get off the streetcar and go throw up. Then I would get to the movie – I’m probably now six, maybe seven [years old] – and I would end up getting lost when I’d go to the bathroom. I’d come back and holler from the back of the theater: “Aunt Evelyn! Where are you?” So I’m sure I wasn’t the most popular kid around. As far as musical environment at that time, I heard everything, all the kind of music that daddy liked. Daddy used to rave about Louis Armstrong’s Big Butter and Egg Man. He thought that that was the greatest thing going. It turned out it was an important part of Louis Armstrong, except I couldn’t have appreciated it then. I was too little, for one thing. And I hadn’t any inclinations about music. What I was hearing was the Golden Gate Jubilee Quartet on Sunday morning [and] Wings Over Jordan. I was very, very much enthralled with Grand Ole Opry. I knew Minnie Pearl and Gene Autry and everybody else of the singing cowboys. Lida: This was all on the radio? David: This was all on the radio. There weren’t a whole lot of options. I don’t even know if we had a record player at first. But on the radio you heard that kind of music. For additional information contact the Archives Center at 202.633.3270 or [email protected] 4 There was a show that came from Gallatin, Tennessee, called Randy’s Record Shop. To tell you how long ago that was, Randy’s Record Shop took its advertisements from Negro enterprises or people who aimed their products at [us]. Their two biggest sellers were Nadinola Skin Whitener – which is kind of different – and Dixie Peach Hair Straightener. Everybody wanted to look like Michael Jackson would later on, when he had the whole thing done. Lida: What kind of music was played on Randy’s Record Shop? David: On Randy’s Record Shop, basically it was boogie-woogie, it was rhythm-and- blues. You heard Louis Jordan. You heard Bill Doggett. Some of the big bands. You probably would have been listening to Count Basie. And a little later, by the 1940s, Ruth Brown, Ray Charles, Dinah Washington, and Nat – of course Nat “King” Cole. Nat “King” Cole was one of the groups that really was enjoying a popularity as a crossover group. That was music that was accessible to everybody, black or white. The first piece I ever heard by Nat “King” Cole was Straighten Up and Fly Right and on the other side was Route 66. Once you had been indoctrinated to that sound, you really fell in love with the music.