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Home , Alec Dankworth, Ginger Baker, Jack Bruce, John Dankworth, Phil Seamen, Ric Grech

’s Confusion hits right note at Cathedral Quarter

MUSIC REVIEW: Ginger Baker @ Fesival Marquee, Belfast published 08.05.14

Don’t let people tell you that Ginger Baker is grumpy. With a droll wit and a tinder dry sense of humour, the 74 year-old gave Belfast a night to remember, with his style in the band he calls Jazz Confusion, playing for a packed and hushed marquee, as part of Cathedral Quarter Arts festival.

Jazz giant Pee Wee Ellis couldn’t make the gig, as he was having an operation on his lip - “a problem for a horn-player” said Baker wryly, whilst wishing him all the best. Fortunately, as he said “jazz musicians can read music” and so veteran sax-player Andy Sheppard was able to step in and do a sterling job, even after Baker introduced him as “Alan.” It seemed like the evening was faltering, when Baker also told us he didn’t have his normal drums and that his drum roadie was off, “doing an exam, or something.”

But with his grinning Ghanaian “friend and bodyguard” Abass DoDoo on buoyant percussion to beat out an African rhythm, Baker relaxed into a physically gruelling set, showing many flashes of his old brilliance, when he was a member of supergroup Cream.

“This one’s a mindblower, a Baker destroyer,” he’d growl and launch into Ginger Spice. Then another African vibe came to play, with a “song I wrote in , after I drove off the side of one of the Atlas mountains and ended up in an olive tree.” Visibly gasping for breath, he took a break, but returned in fine form, prompting a couple of shout-outs from the audience. “Hecklers will be shot,” he joked, to loud laughs from the crowd. Classics in the set, with a workmanlike on bass came from the pen of Thelonius Monk and a final crowd-pleaser from Sonny Rollins, when Baker returned for an encore, sent us happy into the night. Ginger, you’re a genius and a survivor. Keep on drumming.

LIZ KENNEDY

Master class from great survivor Ginger Baker

BY MICHAEL CONAGHAN – 08 MAY 2014 are music's awkward squad, like Shakespeare's lunatics, lovers and poets "of imagination all compact". None more so than Ginger Baker. As a recent documentary demonstrated, his verbal percussion pounds with the same intensity as one of his drum solos. Yet he is one of rock's great survivors. Frail he may be, but the expertise remains. Opener Footprints was a gentle way in, low on pyrotechnics but full of rhythm and the odd hearty thump, especially in tandem with the impressive Abass Dodoo from . It was a reminder of Baker's links with African music and he repeated the same trick with greater power in Ginger Spice. When asked if he was getting into jazz, John Lennon once allegedly replied: "I've been trying to avoid it all my life." Make no mistake, this was a jazz concert through and through, the touchstones for this great 60s legend being Thelonious Monk rather than . This meant that there was the jazz band's tendency to fiddle while a tune burns. But when Baker began to let rip in the second half of the show, this frail man delivered something of a percussion master class.

Ginger Baker review – cantankerous ex-Cream drummer powers on Islington Academy, London The frenzied intensity that made him 'the world's greatest drummer' is gone, but he still plays with flair and authority Mark Beaumont , Monday 5 May 2014 13.31 BST

Ginger Baker at the Islington Academy. Photograph: Brigitte Engl/Redferns/Getty Images

"Everybody's on at me to play ," wheezes Ginger Baker, fielding yet another catcall for the maniacal five- minute drum solo from Cream's 1966 debut album that left every kit cowed and quaking. "But it's not on. I'm 75 and I'm a fucking cripple." It's the closest this one- off launch gig for Baker's crowdfunded anthology, A Drummer's Tale, gets to unleashing his notoriously cantankerous nature. The 2012 documentary Beware of Mr Baker celebrated his spectacular – and spectacularly influential – skins skills, while indulging a tongue as barbed as a prison perimeter and rolling out rafts of ex-bandmates attesting to antisocial behaviour worthy of a minor-league despot. Tonight, however, the pleasure of performance, and his chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, mellow him to a breathless but thankful huff. Baker's too frail to reach the levels of frenzied intensity that gained him the reputation of greatest drummer ever. But, accompanied by bass and saxophone and flanked by mountainous sidekick Abass Dodoo on a comically toytown percussion set, he presides over the shifting jazzsignatures of Wayne Shorter's Footprints with flair, authority and a stoic grimace. Tonight, his focus is on jazz vehicles for intricate, impressive drum duets with Dodoo, and on numbers stretching back to his work with in the 70s. But when he's joined by vocalist Lynne Jackaman from Saint Jude for Cream's there's real magic in hearing him pound out the marching diplodocus beats that saw him credited with having helped found , an honour he detests. "I'm knackered," Baker says as he cuts the set short an hour in. "This may be a posthumous rendition of my new song Why?" The wonder is that he never really seemed to struggle, and still he's drawn out once more, battling through a virtuoso solo beyond the call on Sonny Rollins' carnival ska ditty St Thomas. Clearly, at a fragile 75, he'll lick anything but Toad. Hi-hats off.

Ginger Baker's Beef

By MARC MYERS October 8, 2013

Ginger Baker was out of cigarettes. Reclining in a thick teens looking for hell-raising rock role models. Just don't ask brown leather easy chair in his living room, the drummer if he was stoned. reached for a cellphone and called his fourth and current wife, bellowing for another pack. Dressed in blue-and- "Oh for god's sake, I've never played rock," Mr. Baker turquoise socks, jeans with the belt undone, and a white snapped. "Cream was two jazz players and a guitarist ribbed T-shirt, Mr. Baker sharply rebuffed a visitor's playing improvised music. We never played the same thing suggestion that he skip the smokes, saying he could do as two nights running. Jack and I had been in jazz bands for he pleased. When the cigarettes arrived, Mr. Baker resumed years. All that stuff I did on the drums in Cream didn't come chain smoking while answering questions about his health, from drugs, either—it was from me. It was jazz." his jazz roots and his legacy as the father of modern rock drumming. Unlike musicians who turn to jazz when their rock careers slow, Mr. Baker actually came up through London's jazz scene in the 1950s. He was first exposed to jazz drumming at age 14 after hearing "Quintet of the Year"—an all-star album recorded live in 1953 at Toronto's Massey Hall. "I couldn't believe all the things was doing on the drums—I was blown away." Years of beating his hands on school desks followed before Mr. Baker first sat behind a drum set at a party in 1956. "Friends forced me to go and play, and I was quite good. That's when I realized I was a drummer and would always be a drummer."

Mr. Baker's fist paid gig was with the Storyville Jazzmen in 1957—a band that played New Orleans-style jazz. "Trad jazz was virtually all that was happening in England at the time. Les Wood, the clarinetist, gave me a load of records by drummer . They were quite a revelation. What I "I'm in pain 24 hours a day—I have degenerative arthritis of got is you play by listening to other musicians." the spine, and the painkillers only let me cope," said the 74- year-old Mr. Baker with a scowl as he watched English Mr. Baker toured Europe with several jazz ensembles, soccer on a muted flat-screen television. The night before, including one that backed gospel-R&B singer Sister Rosetta he had been in London performing with his band, Jazz Tharpe. As Mr. Baker moved among London's modern jazz Confusion—a quartet that starts a U.S. tour in New Hope, groups in 1959 and 1960, he met —one of Pa., on Tuesday. "I love playing our music, but I hate the England's most innovative jazz drummers. "Phil told stories traveling. It's more difficult for me now." with his sticks and turned me on to recordings of African drummers. I got the African time straight away and Phil was One enters Mr. Baker's personal space with caution. He is impressed." But Seamen also introduced Mr. Baker to notoriously curt—behavior aggravated by his joint pain and heroin, which would become an on-and-off addiction for the declining hearing after years performing in front of powerful next 21 years. speakers. Interview questions were met with a thundering "Whut?" while answers began with expletives, grunts or In 1961 and '62, Mr. Baker continued playing jazz—including combative retorts. Riled in the 2012 documentary "Beware of gigs with the Bert Courtley Sextet, where he first met Mr. Mr. Baker," Mr. Baker whacked the film's director on the Bruce. As the English economy improved in the early 1960s nose with his cane. and a more youthful London emerged, many younger jazz players gravitated to big-beat blues and R&B bands, which Mr. Baker has always been impulsive. In 1966 he envisioned offered more work and better pay. Cream—rock's first supergroup, with guitarist and . During the trio's two-year run, Mr. One of those bands was 's Blues Incorporated. Baker's expressive polyrhythmic playing elevated the drums " was the drummer and a big fan of mine. He to equal standing with the electric guitar and bass. In concert gave up the drum chair for me in '62. Charlie told me he back then, Mr. Baker's flame-red hair, wide eyes and didn't want to be a musician, that there wasn't any security in possessed expressions during lengthy, freewheeling solos it. Can you imagine? A short time later, Mick [Jagger] and made him an antihero for a generation of pencil-beating Brian [Jones] said they were forming a band and needed a drummer. I recommended Charlie."

In 1964, Korner's alto saxophonist and organist left to form an R&B band—taking Messrs. Baker and Bruce with him and adding John McLaughlin. The Graham Bond Organization's "Oh Baby" in 1965 features one of Mr. Baker's earliest recorded drum solos. "The band was a whole new bag—funky and commercial," Mr. Baker said. "I was able to try different things."

When the Bond band began to disintegrate in 1966 as members squabbled, Mr. Baker said he decided to form his own band with Mr. Clapton. Mr. Bruce was their choice for bassist. For the next two years, Cream revolutionized rock with long, improvised solos and psychedelic imagery. "Crowds got larger, and Jack kept adding more Marshall amps. The louder sound damaged my hearing. By '68, I couldn't take it any more. The last year of Cream was very painful."

After Cream, Mr. Baker joined with Mr. Clapton, bassist and keyboard player . When the group folded in 1969, Mr. Baker formed a jazz-rock fusion band and then moved to in 1970, where he founded the first of several world-music ensembles. Mr. Baker also performed with jazz drummers and . "They were drum battles that turned into duets. They became my friends and accepted me as playing at the same level as them."

Last year, after living in South Africa, Mr. Baker returned to live in England with his wife and her teenage daughter. What does Mr. Baker think of Cream fans and critics who consider him a rock drummer? "I don't give a damn what people think—I move forward," he said. "When people put drummers like , and in the same bag as me, it's really insulting. I have a gift, and none of them is even on the same street as me. The fact that I can still play is a miracle, isn't it?"

Mr. Myers writes daily about music at JazzWax.com.

REVIEW: Ginger Baker at Bucks County Playhouse shows that, even diminished, he's Cream of drummers

John J. Moser , October 9, 2013 Photos by Brian Hineline/Special to The Morning Call

Midway through his concert Tuesday at Bucks County Playhouse in New Hope, legendary rock drummer Ginger Baker made what may be a first in music: An acknowledgment that the skills that made Cream and Blind Faith such rock powerhouses, and essentially was the archetype of rock drummer, have diminished. “I want people to understand,” he told the nearly sold-out audience for the opening show of his first American tour in 17 years. “I’m 74 years old and I’ve got a lot of physical limitations. If I can’t play all you want me to, I’m sorry. But I do my best.” The irony was that the apology was unnecessary. Unless someone went to the show mistakenly expecting Baker’s 1960s rock repertoire, it was a perfectly enjoyable night of jazz that was better than most music you’ll hear, and offered Baker’s still formidable skills – and even flashes of what they once were. In a concert that offered nine songs in 85 minutes of music (plus and intermission), Baker did pretty much everything right. He played songs that were percussion-oriented, though that might have been the result of Baker’s band, His Jazz Confusion, being made up of him, another percussionist and a bassist, with just a sax providing melody. He surrounded himself with players of the highest caliber. And when he spoke, he was delightfully contrary and prickly—not in an unpleasant way, but in the endearing manner of a crotchety uncle. “Ginger!” someone from the crowd shouted before a song. “Be quiet!” he shouted back, in the was someone would chasten a child. When people in the crowd hooted enthusiastically after an especially good excursion on the Ron Miles’ song “Ginger Spice,” Baker quipped, “Stop heckling! Really, behave yourselves.” (He had introduced the song by sardonically noting Miles had “never heard of the Spice Girls.”) In fact, Baker was almost grandfatherly in his appearance: Bespectacled, his famous ginger hair now mostly white and receding, dressed in a plum dress shirt. But his playing, and that of his band, was very good, indeed.

The show opened with Wayne Shorter’s “Footprints” – reserved jazz, heavy on sax from accomplished player Pee Wee Ellis. Baker spent most of the song on the , and the crowd cheered when his playing first came to the front. That was the pattern of many of the songs: Baker letting his players carry the limelight until he would have a run or two in the middle or end. The second song, the Ellis-written “Twelve and More Blues,” gave the spotlight to bassist Alec Dankworth, who was impressive. Then, mid-song, Baker displayed some of his renowned power, with double-stick strikes that again drew big cheers. Dankworth got another workout on Sonny Rollins’ “St. Thomas,” and this time he got the cheers, deservedly. The aforementioned “Ginger Spice” was much more Baker’s vehicle, and he was all over his kit, though it was much more about precision than power. After a 15-minute intermission, the group returned with a three-song set that started with “Ding Dong Dan,” highlighting second percussionist Abass Dodoo. It showed that His Jazz Confusion is no star-trip vehicle – it’s a real band. A later song, smoother with more melody, had no drum solo at all. The group’s encore – “You want to watch me die,” he replied to the audience’s loud, sustained cheers . “You’d like that, right?“ – was a fun, loose song called “Why?” Baker explained, “In my life, I’ve had many bad things happen to me,” he said. “And I always ask – why?” The song then took off, with breaks in which the audience was encouraged to shout, “Why?” But the night’s best was the song with which Ginger Baker and His Jazz Confusion closed the main set. Perhaps to mollify those who longed to hear Bakers thunder from Cream’s “Sunshine of Your Love,” he played “Aiko Biaye,” a song from Ginger Baker’s Airforce, his post-Blind Faith band. It offered Baker’s most powerful playing of the night, with double-stick slams, sustained rolls and almost a military-beat attack. It gave a flash of just how good Baker was, and showed that, even with diminished skills, his concerts are a worthy outing. The concert was the centerpiece of the venue’s new Lambertville Music Hall series.

MUSIC REVIEW A Room Is Tense as African Rhythms Meet Jazz Ginger Baker Heats Up the Iridium

Ruby Washington/ By BEN RATLIFF Published: October 10, 2013

Behind the drums at Iridium on Wednesday night, Ginger Baker leaned back, his chin drawn in toward his Adam’s apple, holding his sticks toward the bottom, his time as far back as his posture, head fixed within a narrow swiveling perimeter, wide eyes on amber alert.

He was playing a version of Wayne Shorter’s “Footprints” with his new band, Ginger Baker Jazz Confusion, which comes to jazz sideways or through very old roots, and is not confused at all: it is quite sure what it’s about. Those eyes were curious, though. Was he about to boil over or just listening hard? Or both?

Soon the problem became clear: he couldn’t hear his high-hat properly through his stage monitor. After a series of increasingly irritated gestures to the sound man, the problem was fixed, but the room remained tense.

Mr. Baker, 74, hasn’t done a club gig in New York since 1997, and was last seen here at in 2005, with his old band Cream. In the 1960s, he had brought to Cream the layered implications of jazz drumming; he understood, through a studious and wild musicality, the magnetized force between marching and dancing rhythms, between Baby Dodds and Max Roach, and lodged that knowledge in an English improvising rock band. In the 1970s, he lived in Nigeria, where he toured and recorded with Fela, the great bandleader and exemplar of Afrobeat.

What you get through Sunday at the Iridium is essentially African cross-rhythms through the filter of a pianoless jazz group — or vice versa. But material and style aren’t so important: you’re getting the essence of his sound, up close, with two kick drums and two snare drums, played in polyrhythmic conjunction with another drummer, the Ghanaian hand- percussionist Abass Dodoo. And his personality.

He spoke slowly to the crowd between songs, in the unmistakable tone of a man who will not be negotiated with. When he heard talking over his own words, he raised his voice and told the crowd, not humorously, to shut up.

Besides Mr. Baker and Mr. Dodoo, the quartet includes the tenor saxophonist Pee Wee Ellis, from James Brown’s late-’60s band, and the English bassist Alec Dankworth. It gravitates toward vamps in 6- and 12- and 2-beat patterns. The rhythm makes the music spread outward, with Mr. Ellis’s solos built up from mostly simple, sturdy songs, based in blues or scales.

It’s not fussy, as the heavy, elegant rhythm rises up. It seems as if the band could set up in a village square almost anywhere in the world and do business.

And it was tense music, almost always — even in the most peaceful of its material, like “Aiko Biaye,” an adapted Nigerian folk song — because Mr. Baker’s sound is so imposing and broad, slow and confident, from the double snares to the steady pedaling of his high-hat. It’s not loud with ambition, but with spirit and intent.

Concert Review: Ginger Baker's Jazz Confusion at Iridium, NYC The volatile drummer's still got it at 74 By Jeff Tamarkin

Some came to hear “Toad,” or at least “Sunshine of Your Love,” but there would be nothing remotely resembling Cream tonight. Others, having recently seen Beware of Mr. Baker, the 2012 documentary profiling the irascible 74-year-old British drummer, undoubtedly hoped he would smack someone in the nose with his cane, as he does to the director in one of the defining moments of the film. But the closest he came to that was grimacing repeatedly when the soundman neglected to turn the volume up on his hi-hat mic to his satisfaction. What Ginger Baker came to do tonight—and will continue to do here through Sunday, and on the other dates of his short American tour—was to play jazz.

That in itself should not have surprised anyone. Jazz was Baker’s first love—he played the music in the early ’60s before he detoured into rock, blues and, later, , and he’s never seen himself as anything other than a jazz drummer. The few years he spent with Eric Clapton and Jack Bruce in the groundbreaking Cream, followed by Blind Faith, Ginger Baker’s Air Force and other rock-oriented outfits, gave him his fame as one of the all-time power drummers, but he’s long expressed his disdain for most rock and has downplayed his own influence on the genre, dismissing even the most celebrated rock drummers as inferior to his own jazz heroes.

So when he turned up on opening night at Iridium with a quartet—Ginger Baker’s Jazz Confusion—featuring tenor saxophonist Pee Wee Ellis (a renowned alumnus of James Brown’s troupe and ’s bands), bassist Alec Dankworth (the son of British vocalist and saxophonist/clarinetist ) and the Ghanaian percussionist Abbas Dodoo (Baker introduced the imposing man as “my bodyguard”), it was clear that Baker meant business. And get down to business was what they did, immediately launching into a slowly but deliberately unfolding reading of Wayne Shorter’s “Footprints.” Although he still performs on a kit sporting drums, Baker’s touch is lighter now, more nuanced. As he’s always done, he spent much time on his toms but also on his small crash cymbals and hi-hat. The muscular, pyrotechnic displays of his Cream days have given way to polyrhythmic duets with his African cohort, and plenty of funky swinging. And for that Baker couldn’t have chosen two more sympathetic collaborators than Ellis and Dankworth, both of whom were always in the pocket here, providing all of the melody and giving Baker and Dodoo plenty to feed off.

Following the Shorter piece, Baker noted that “I’m getting old” and that, despite the desires of the venue’s management, he would break the first set into two parts, taking a break when he felt he needed one. But there were no signs of weakness at all, no flagging in his playing. In Ellis’ “Twelve and More Blues,” Baker and Dodoo engaged in a call-and-response with the saxophonist’s lead lines and Dankworth’s double bass, veering into serious post-bop territory at times. Baker at first was tentative, toodling on snare as he waited for the volume on his hi-hat to be turned up, then he tore loose, settling into a deep, intricate groove with Dodoo that was maintained into the next number, which Baker described in advance as being inspired by the Atlas Mountains of Algeria. With Ellis approximating a Coltranesque Eastern motif and Dankworth, now on electric, providing a root and counterpointing the melody, the quartet locked into some of its most thrilling music of the evening.

“Cyril Davies,” a midtempo tribute to the pioneering British bluesman, brought out Ellis’ soul side, and “Ginger Spice,” written by trumpeter Ron Miles, who recorded the tune with Baker on the drummer’s 1999 album Coward of the Country, found Baker doubling the time while Dankworth locked into a repetitive bassline. As Ellis squealed giddily in his upper register, Baker and Dodoo took the cue and accelerated the pace, syncing tightly and giving the bassist enough space to take one of his most impressively inventive solos of the night.

Following the short break previously announced, the group returned with Ellis’ “Ding Dong Dang,” a swinging blues that featured several tradeoffs between the saxist and the two drummers (one of which found Ellis quoting what sounded vaguely like the /Santana classic “Black Magic Woman” for a bar or two). “Aiko Biaye,” which Baker introed as an “old folk song,” highlighted the Afro-centric nature of the quartet’s rhythmic leanings. Baker, minus the fury of his younger days and more interested in subtleties, was clearly at home in this world—he briefly joined Fela Kuti’s Nigerian outfit Afrika 70 in the early ’70s and spent much time living and working in South Africa. Here, he was at his happiest burrowing deeper and deeper into twisted cross-rhythms with Dodoo, an exciting player who augmented his congas with various cymbals and other percussive tools, serving as a foil for the now more-reserved Baker with showmanship and flair.

For their encore, Jazz Confusion performed “Why?,” which required the audience to shout the titular word when prompted by breaks in the 1-2-3/1-2-3/1-2-3 beat. That tune was the closest Ginger Baker came to producing a smile this night, but just the fact that he was here, alive and still quite capable on his instrument, was enough of a reason for this mostly-over-50 crowd to go home happy.

Review: At the Dakota, drummer Ginger Baker marches to a jazz beat

By Dan Emerson Special to the Pioneer Press

POSTED: 10/15/2013 12:01:00 AM CDT

Ginger Baker

There was rock royalty represented onstage at the Dakota Jazz Club on Tuesday night, in the person of Rock and Roll Hall of Fame drummer Ginger Baker, who opened a two-night stand with his Jazz Confusion quartet.

Even in his 1960s days with arena rock juggernauts Cream and Blind Faith, Baker played with noticeably more complexity and finesse than most of his rock drumming colleagues, while attracting attention with his flamboyant, jazz-steeped style.

The 74-year-old Baker -- whose famous red hair has long since turned gray -- has always harbored jazz aspirations, a side of his musical persona he is indulging with his current tour.

The Jazz Confusion group also includes saxophonist Pee Wee Ellis, whose credits include arranging and co-writing several major James Brown hits back in the '60s; bassist Alec Dankworth (the son of the prominent English jazz duo Cleo Laine and John Dankworth); and Abass Dodoo, a hand percussionist from Ghana.

Along with American jazz and blues, African rhythms have also played a major role in Baker's development and evolution as a drummer. After Blind Faith, he lived and played music in Nigeria from 1970 to 1976.

Tuesday's early set opened with a relatively straightforward performance of Wayne Shorter's "Footprints." There was some complexity, in the form of the polyrhythms played in tandem by Baker and Dodoo, a highly skilled percussionist who relied mostly on his congas. The two veteran musicians are a potent rhythm team.

Rhythmically, the piece -- and much of the other music played Tuesday night -- was strikingly reminiscent of jazz recordings made back in the late 1960s and early '70s by the late great jazz drummer Elvin Jones. Jones' propensity for multiple layers of rhythm is shared by Baker. In addition, Baker and Jones were once verbal sparring partners, and famously staged a "drum battle" in the '70s.

The early set also included "Twelve and More Blues, a composition by Ellis featuring a quirky melody line and stop-time rhythm.

Another piece was "Ginger Spice," a composition by trumpeter Ron Miles that also featured a relatively simple melody and chord pattern, but complicated and exuberant polyrhythms laid down by Dodoo and Baker. Dodoo used his left-hand stick to play a blindingly fast pattern on two small cymbals mounted alongside his congas.

Dankworth played a brisk pattern on his Fender bass that was perfectly synchronized to the drumbeat.

The relatively brief opening set also included "Ain Temouchant," an instrumental tune Baker once wrote to commemorate a near-death experience he had on an Algerian mountainside. Baker drove his car off the mountain. The car landed in an olive tree, allowing Baker to continue his storied musical career.

Ginger Baker and Jazz Confusion will perform again at 7 p.m. Wednesday at the Dakota in downtown Minneapolis.

bebopified Pamela Espeland, 16th October. Pictures by John Whiting.

Baker has always loved jazz. He started out as a jazz drummer in the 1960s and brought its colors and complexities along when he moved into rock and superstardom. In the 1990s, he formed the Ginger Baker Trio with and and later created a group called the Denver Jazz Quintet-to-Octet (DJQ2O) with trumpeter Ron Miles and bassist Artie Moore. He played with Elvin Jones, Max Roach, and Art Blakey. His double-bass-drum kit is a direct descendant of Louis Belleson’s.

So Baker is not just another former rock (or pop, or country) star who decides to make a comeback through jazz. He’s been a jazz musician all along. In fact, don’t call him a rock drummer. He prefers jazz drummer.

Baker named his latest group Ginger Baker’s Jazz Confusion, and it’s a real jazz band, with roots in America, England, and Africa.

Schooled by Sonny Rollins, tenor saxophonist Pee Wee Ellis played with James Brown, Maceo Parker, and Van Morrison. Bassist Alec Dankworth is the son of the great vocalist Cleo Laine and jazz saxophonist/bandleader John Dankworth. Ghanaian percussionist Abbas Dodoo has worked with Baker for many years; Baker affectionately introduced the big man as “my bodyguard.” He played congas, cowbell, and shekere (beaded gourd).

Anyone in the audience at the Dakota who was hoping for some “” or “Sunshine of Your Love” was put straight by the first song of the night, Wayne Shorter’s “Footprints,” a jazz classic newly infused with African polyrhythms. The rest of the set brought blues and world music and more jazz.

How was the show? It was good. Very good, and often thrilling. Heavy on the drums, but that’s what everyone came to hear. The legendary, terrifying Ginger Baker, live! Especially when Baker and Dodoo fell into a groove, it was all about the drums, pounding and interweaving those intricate rhythms in among the thunder of Baker’s two basses. Ellis eschewed the funk for which he’s famous and stuck to straight-ahead jazz, making sounds that probably surprised some of his fans in the house: sustained notes, like singing. It was direct and serious and down to business. In some ways, it was more like a rock concert than many jazz performances; players took solos, but they were short, with no out-there improvisations that can make those unfamiliar with jazz squirm in their chairs. Last night won’t go down in history as the most transcendant or revelatory jazz concert ever, but it was one that a broad cross-section of music lovers – jazz fans, rock fans, ’60s survivors and hipsters – could appreciate and enjoy.

Touring is not easy for Baker. He has COPD (chronic obstructive pulmonary disease), caused by smoking, and he still smokes; he says it helps him deal with the pain of another serious medical condition that plagues him, degenerative osteoarthritis of the spine. He told The Mirror that “drumming is agony.” He doesn’t launch into five- or ten-minute solos anymore, but neither does he hold back, even when it hurts, and from what he says, it always hurts.

At the Dakota, he took a 20-minute break midway through because he needed it. When he talked to the crowd after playing a tune, he was short of breath. When he stood up, Dodoo moved in to help him walk off stage. “Let me recover a bit,” he said before the break. “I’m getting too old for this.” When Baker returned, after playing “Cyril Davies” (what he called “the lull before the storm”) and then “St. Thomas” (the storm), he said, “I’m far too old for

this. It’s not a joke, it’s serious!” It was Dodoo who urged us to call him back for the encore. “Make some noise!” he shouted. “Say Gin-gah Ba-kah! Gin-gah Ba-kah!” We did. When the band returned, Baker introduced the encore with, “Terrible things have happened to me in the past, and they keep happening right up until today. And always, when these things happen, I ask a question: Why?” And we sang along: Why? Why? Why?

Review: Ginger Baker at Yoshi’s Oakland October 23, 2013 Written by M B L

Ginger Baker made a pilgrimage to Oakland this weekend. Saturday’s two shows were completely sold out and Sunday only had a few empty chairs. It is hard to say what brought the crowds. Looked like a lot of folks last saw him playing alongside Eric Clapton with Cream or Blind Faith.

I was among a smaller, slightly younger group that had seen the recent documentary Beware of Mr. Baker, more interested in Ginger Baker the man, one of the great drummers of all time but also a fascinating character that lived in Nigeria from 1970-76 collaborating with Fela. A man that is continuously followed by tragedy, some self-inflicted. A scary dude that tells it like it is with no patience for bullshit. If you don’t have time for the movie, check out this recent interview with .

Ginger Baker’s Jazz Confusion was a four-piece with Ginger on a serious set up including double bass drums. There was a ‘drunk-driving taxi guy from Ghana’ on conga and bongo (Abass Dodoo). He played cowbell and three tiny cymbals mostly with his hands. Alec Dankworth played amazing upright bass and a mean electric to boot. The sax player, Pee Wee Ellis, sat in a chair the whole time. Ellis played with James Brown in the ’60s and Van Morrison through the ’80s and ’90s. He is one of those players that makes it look so easy. He wrote one song from the setlist entitled “Twelve and More Blues”. Solos went from sax to bass to drums with Ginger and the taxi-conga man playing together with a wild African result.

Ginger wrote one song while driving “at top speed” in the Atlas Mountains of North Algeria. He lost control of the vehicle and landed in a small village. The long hypnotic tune left me on camel back with William Burroughs when suddenly Ginger’s car comes flying through the sky to land on the dirt road in front of us.

They played “Footprints” by Wayne Shorter and “Ginger Spice” by Ron Miles with a fierce solo of tiny cymbals from Abass Dodoo. After a short break they played a slow blues with an unnerving

metronome beat coming from the conga player. The last song of the night was a “killer” from Lagos Nigeria that was described as both “a lullaby and a war crime.”

For the encore Ginger commented that this was the 20th show in 10 days and it was “bloody hard work.” He suggested this might be his last show, and we might all see him die on stage. Indeed, he was panting and wheezing as he spoke between songs, years of cigarette smoking and the resulting COPD at work. He spoke of the tragedy that seems to follow him around, and despite the crowds nervous laughter, he insisted that it was not a laughing matter. The wife of his children was at the moment in the ICU and not expected to make it. These events always made him ask “Why?” which became the last song of the evening with breaks for the crowd to yell “Why?!” During this tune the sax player cut loose, taking us from Van Morrison’s “Moon Dance” to James Brown’s “I Feel Good”. The conga player pulled out some drumsticks and went haywire on those tiny cymbals, his arms a complete blur.

Ginger Baker Jazz approach. Deceptively crude African polyrhythms fused brilliantly with heavy dub Confusion bass lines on sessions such as 1990's Middle Passage (Axiom), and I've always preferred Ginger Baker in these sessions to the string of largely forgettable straight ahead sets the drummer Fred Grand reports that the former cut for Atlantic. Although he featured players Cream drummer has found in his new such as Bill Frisell, Ron Miles and , group with Alec Dankworth and Pee Baker's touch frequently seemed just too Wee Ellis a balance that plays to his heavy, dragging the beat and simply not strengths, cracking that elusive jazz nut "swinging" (however you define that rather once and for all nebulous phenomenon).

For the final night of the 2012 Glasgow jazz Few headliners at a jazz festival can claim to festival, Baker brought his new group Jazz have been voted the person least likely to Confusion to the city's Old Fruitmarket. With survive the 1960s. With a celebrated notoriety former James Brown hornman Pee Wee Ellis as a hell-raiser who explored the rock & roll (tenor saxophone), the versatile Alec lifestyle to its full potential, Ginger Baker can Dankworth (acoustic and electric basses) and lay legitimate claim to that slightly dubious Ghanaian percussion master Abass Dodoo, this mantle. He found his eternal niche with Eric slightly improbable aggregate always seemed Clapton and Jack Bruce in the rock likely to be capable of surprise. And so it Cream. The group stretched conventional song turned out to be – with heavy tribal rhythms forms to breaking point and foregrounded and deep pulsing bass lines, the Laswell sound improvisation to an almost unprecedented had found an effective acoustic voice and built extent. Their brief career is perhaps as crucial a clever bridge between leftfield and as the influence of Hendrix in turning the ears mainstream. of Miles Davis, giving Baker at least a tangential relationship to the direction taken On the opening number, Wayne Shorter's by jazz in the 1970s. An African sojourn saw Footprints, the drummer's rather leaden the drummer falling for the vibrant rhythms of approach didn't immediately win me over. Ellis the continent and changed his musical outlook carried the line with great authority and forever. Dankworth's presence provided a rock-solid Although Baker has "dabbled" on-and-off with backbone, but the piece felt slightly static until jazz for many years, it has usually been his my ears had attuned to the largely non- more crossover projects in collaboration with Western approach to rhythm. With a rich post- the likes of , and Coltrane sound, Ellis certainly knows his way that have best suited his unique

around the instrument's false fingerings and After the break Charlie Haden's Ginger Blues multiphonics and seems to have hidden his saw Baker at perhaps his most limber, and it talents under a bushel of funk for most of his positively smouldered. Cyril Davies, a career. Given the group's leaning towards dedication to the late pioneer, tribal percussion, the composite sound wasn't brought a noticeable change of mood. Those unlike Kahil El'Zabar's "Ritual Trio", and tribal rhythms became almost monolithic and Ellisshowed a surprising kinship to Ari Brown Ellis played his most astringently free solo of and Fred Anderson. Monk's Bemsha Swing was the evening. Yet no matter how expressionistic cleverly rearranged to allow Baker's almost the piece became, there was always a groove steel pan-like approach to accent the theme, or a faint blue line for the spellbinding with Dankworth's solo a model of invention saxophonist to follow. Before we knew it we'd within a groove and Ellis's deep Rouse-like arrived at the encore, Rollins' calypso-inspired tenor wringing every nuance out of the theme. St Thomas, where a set of steel pans really wouldn't have gone amiss. Several of the saxophonist's compositions were featured in the set, the loose and bluesy In Jazz Confusion, Baker has somewhat Twelve And More Bluesbeing fairly typical and ironically found a new jazz clarity. Had there making a great blowing vehicle. Even Baker been a conventional harmony instrument in seemed to be swinging now, his large two bass the mix then this group would almost certainly drum kit sparking out crisp cross-rhythms with have been a less appealing prospect. As it the animated Dodoo. A decidedly off-kilter stood, the drummer seems at last to have variety of swing, it recalled the Art Ensemble found a balance that plays to his strengths, of Chicago in their prime and was cracking that elusive jazz nut once and for all devastatingly effective. Ginger Spice could and developing a format which could serve perhaps have used more space for Ron Miles's him well with a number of frontline haunting theme to breathe, and as soon as it instruments. was over Baker's croaking voice announced an impromptu break so that he could "go to the Fred Grand - Jazz Journal 2 july 2012 khazi" – the spirit of rock & roll indeed.

By rights, a lifetime of booze, drugs, one evening but the spark and energy of fights, car crashes and wild women African percussionist Abass Dodoo was crucial. should have left Ginger Baker a wreck, but apparently not so. The Lewisham- “He’s from a famous Ghanaian drum family, born drum icon’s once-red hair is and they’re the guv’nors,”croaked Baker. receding and grey but he can still beat out jazz and afro-rhythms with a Mixing jazz by Monk, Rollins and Wayne semblance of the old power. Shorter with blues for an old friend [Cyril

Davies] and tribal themes from Algeria and No one could expect him to thrash the drumkit Nigeria, he did a decent night’s work. Not bad as violently as he once did with Blues for the man once voted Least Likely to Survive Incorporated, Cream, Blind Faith, Air Force and the Sixties. - Fela Kuti, yet he performed two 90-minute sets with a pianoless, guitarless quartet that Jack Massarik - London Evening Standard 30 left him nowhere to hide. april 2012 Seldom can tenorist Pee Wee Ellis and bassist Alec Dankworth have taken so many solos in

Friday at Brecon Jazz Festival, 10/08/2012 Reviewed by Ian Mann

Jazz Confusion brings together Baker’s jazz and African leanings in a quartet featuring himself on kit drums and the Ghanian born Abass Dodoo on percussion. Veteran jazz/funk saxophonist Pee Wee Ellis (of James Brown fame) is on tenor with the hugely versatile bassist Alec Dankworth rounding out the group. The new band had debuted with a sold out performance at ’s and a successful appearance at Glasgow Jazz Festival. Tonight they produced a value for money performance lasting for an hour and half featuring a mix of jazz and bop standards plus originals by Baker, Ellis and Ron Miles. Unsurprisingly the music was hugely rhythmic with Dankworth adding a tremendous drive to complement the work of the twin drummers. As the sole real melody instrument a lot of responsibility rested on Ellis’ burly shoulders and he rose to the challenge magnificently.

The quartet began with an arrangement of Wayne Shorter’s classic “Footprints” with Ellis taking the first solo, his tone hard edged, swinging and authoritative. Dankworth followed on deeply resonant double bass and the tune climaxed with something of a drum battle between Baker and Dodoo. Many of the tunes followed the same pattern, a format that could soon have become boring but was saved from this fate by the musical and rhythmic inventiveness and sophistication of Dankworth, one of the most imaginative bass soloists around. The percussion duels between Baker and Dodoo actually gained in intensity as the set developed and despite the apparent restrictions of a chordless instrumental line up the quartet held the attention of the audience throughout, gradually building up a considerable head of steam in the process.

Ellis’ punchy, accessible “Twelve Or More Blues” proved to be a big crowd favourite building from a solo tenor sax intro through solos by Ellis and Dankworth to a stirring series of sax and drum exchanges. Ellis’ hard hitting, good humoured amalgam of jazz and blues was followed by Charlie Haden’s “Ginger Blues”, specifically written for Baker and here featuring further fine soloing from Ellis and Dankworth.

First heard on the “Coward Of The County” album Baker’s tribute to his former mentor Cyril Davies mixed blues forms with African rhythms, a reminder of the close links between traditional African music and the mutated form that emerged in America as the blues. An arrangement of ’s “Groovin’ High” represented Ginger’s acknowledgement to the pioneers of bebop. Baker’s unaccompanied drums introduced Ron Miles’ tune “Ginger Spice” which the swears pre- dates the Spice Girls although some critics have been less than convinced. In any event it’s a great tune here given extra piquancy by Dankworth switching to electric bass to lay down a big, fat groove subsequently soared over by Ellis’ Middle Eastern inflected tenor. Dankworth later took a type solo above a double percussive barrage. Thrilling stuff.

Next Baker tossed a Thelonious Monk tune into the mix that I couldn’t quite put my finger on (I think it may have been “Bemsha Swing”). This was notable for Baker’s brilliant cymbal work and another Dankworth electric bass solo, this time similar in execution to the style of Back Door’s Colin Hodgkinson.

The next piece was written by Baker and named after a town in the Atlas Mountains of Morocco but which I won’t attempt at trying to spell here. Baker, who lived a notoriously wild life back in the 60’s ran his car off

the road somewhere near here but miraculously lived to tell the tale. The music itself had a distinct North African influence with solos by Ellis on tenor and Dankworth on electric bass above the exotic rhythms laid down by Baker and Dodoo. The percussionist is an extrovert performer with a great sense of fun and he was heard to good effect here.

Baker’s “Oi!” began boppishly but deployed a catchy hook to encourage an enjoyable element of audience participation (we were required to shout “Oi!” periodically, great fun). The set closed with an imaginative arrangement of Sonny Rollins’ classic jazz calypso “St. Thomas” with Ellis’ tenor whinnying impatiently and Dankworth laying down a powerful underpinning bass groove. But the fireworks came with the most exciting percussion feature of the night, beginning with a solo from the exuberant Dodoo and developing into a full on battle with Baker as Dodoo made stunning use of a set of suspended small cymbals. A thrilling end to a surprisingly enjoyable concert.

Ginger Baker: 'I was listening to the radio when they announced my death'

No other band got close to Cream – or ever will. I played the drums, Eric [Clapton] was the best guitarist of all time and our sets [featuring hits such as "Sunshine of Your Love"] were never the same two nights running; it was magic. Unfortunately it didn't last [the band broke up in 1968] but the reunion at the [in 2005] was amazing; it felt like we'd not seen one another for a few weeks, not 35 years!

Every drummer has to have a few marbles missing. While most musicians just get their horn out and play, as a drummer you've got huge amounts of equipment to set up and break into bits every night, which is unsettling.

I've got to know and play with all my heroes, such as [American jazz percussionist] Max Roach, and become good friends with them. Have I received the recognition I deserve? No, but that's the way of the I haven't drunk for 20 years. I stopped after I joined world: I just carry on. the Colorado Fire Department, as a first responder dealing with road accidents – the vast majority caused I got heavily messed up with heroin. Then in 1964 I by young drunken idiots. decided I would stop. It took me another 17 years of fighting; of getting off and going back on it. You can't My arthritis stops me doing a lot, but the amazing say you've kicked it until you've been clean for two thing is that it doesn't affect my ability to play drums, years, as once you get out of the physical withdrawal, which is a joy and I'm playing as well as ever. But the mental one stays with you for ever. afterwards I'm in incredible pain, because of my spine, and I have to lie down. Then I have nightmares that I was listening to the radio when they announced my some day I'll wake up and won't be able to play any death. The announcer said it was from a heroin more; it's my biggest fear. overdose. I also got put in the "Playboy Dead Band" in 1972, along with and Janis Joplin, which I don't feel bad about breaking Jay Bulger's was funny. nose [Baker assaulted the film-maker with his cane during the making of last year's rock documentary, My life is a constant fiasco. I've no idea why, it's just Beware of Mr Baker.] Actually, I felt good about it as bad luck. [Baker has endured drug addiction, a string I'd had a whole month of being followed around by of failed businesses and myriad bankruptcies, cameras and [Bulger] suggesting I do silly things that I numerous physical injuries and now suffers a wouldn't normally do. degenerative spine condition.] I'm a survivor, unfortunately, and right now I'm in a difficult financial crisis. , Sunday 13th January 2013

Ginger Baker: 'I came off heroin something like 29 times'

Former Cream drummer Ginger Baker talks about his battle with heroin, how he was the original Rolling Stones drummer and being the subject of new documentary Beware of Mr Baker

Edward Helmore, The Observer, Saturday 5 January 2013 n the 60s, when rock musicians bestrode the world like demigods, no one embodied the wildness of the job description more completely than Peter "Ginger" Baker. A jazz drummer by calling, Baker gained a reputation as the most uncontrollable musician on the scene – a cadaverous, red-headed giant with a reputation for belligerence, a heroin addict like his jazz heroes, a man with strings of girlfriends, a neglected wife, father of the rock drum solo and several children, and driver of a custom-built Jensen FF.

But Baker's natural musicality on the kit was a match for any musician. Jimi Hendrix came to Britain to pay tribute to Cream, comprising Baker, Eric Clapton and Jack Bruce. With the addition of Steve Winwood and Ric Grech, Baker and Clapton formed the short-lived Blind Faith; then came Baker's own Air Force, before he split for the home of the drum, west Africa, and into a musical partnership with the great Fela Kuti.

But after nearly four decades of wandering, from Hawaii to Jamaica, to Colorado and South Africa to set up a polo school, the 73-year-old, Lewisham- born drummer – and the man once voted the rock star least likely to survive the 60s – is back in Britain and living in . A recent tour of Japan with Ginger Baker's Jazz Confusion left him hospitalised with a serious respiratory infection and he's dogged by painful degenerative osteoarthiritis that has been aggravated by riding accidents. "I couldn't breathe. For a moment I thought I was dying," Baker, who is recuperating, told the Observer last week.

If it's grim in Kent, across the Atlantic Baker's fame is again in the ascendant. A new documentary, Beware of Mr Baker, is packing arthouse cinemas in New York and Los Angeles. It's been hailed as one of the most compelling rock documentary of recent years, and will be seen in the UK in the coming months.

Baker, who has been married four times, says he enjoyed the film in parts. "I've only seen it once. Some of it was okay, some wasn't. But I didn't make it," he says. But he reflects: "It's been an amazing rollercoaster ride. I've lost everything many times. A lot of people would have just given up." His most recent incarnation in the polo business collapsed after Baker sued the First National Bank of South Africa. "I won the case but it caused my financial ruin."

Baker may have found a worthy adversary in Jay Bulger, a novice documentary maker who visited him in South Africa under the pretence of being a reporter for Rolling Stone a decade ago. Baker is filmed clocking Bulger on the nose with his walking cane. "I had no choice," Baker says. "That was after a month of interviews, and I hate interviews. He was coming up with silly, stupid things I didn't want to do, like teaching some African kids how to play." For Bulger, the idea of capturing the drummer in a documentary was irresistible. "I was advised to stay clear of Ginger," he said recently. "I'd heard he was manic, dangerous, unapproachable. He sounded like Grendel from Beowulf."

Old bandmates, such as Jack Bruce – whom Baker physically attacked, precipitating the breakup of Cream – and Clapton contribute to the documentary. Asked if contemporaries such as John Bonham or Keith Moon ever measured up to Baker, Clapton is emphatic: "No. No. No. Different league. Completely."

Instead, Baker sought the recognition of heroes such as Elvin Jones, Max Roach, Phil Seamen and Art Blakey. Not Bonham or Moon? "Don't make me laugh," he says. "If it doesn't swing, it doesn't swing. There's lots of drummers with lots of technique. It doesn't matter how many beats you play, it's where you play them, and a lot of it is what you don't play." So what would have happened if Cream had stayed together?

"Cream only lasted as long as it did because it was successful," Baker says. "I was lucky to be part of a movement in which I was one of the major players."

"If truth be known," he continues, "I was the Stones' first drummer. We used to do the interval for Alexis Korner with Mick Jagger, who was like Korner's protege, and . I got on very well with Brian, so we formed a band. Then Charlie [Watts] left Alexis Korner so I could join, and I got Charlie into the Stones. But it was Brian who set the Stones on its path."

But Baker was never destined to stay in one place, or one band, for long. In retrospect, the foreign adventuring was largely a result of the heroin addiction he'd acquired as a jazz drummer in the London clubs of the late 1950s and early 1960s. "I don't have fond memories of it at all. To find you have to do something just to feel normal is not a good road. I got involved in 1960 when people were getting more than they were using on prescription and selling it. It was called a 'jack', one sixth of a gram of heroin in one tiny white pill." While others were dabbling – "Clapton was heading in that direction, but Eric's problem was alcohol, not heroin" – Baker was deep in the throes of addiction.

"Every time I went to Africa I got off," he recalls. "You have to get a good two years clear, and those two years are the most difficult. You reach a point where you can say 'no'. Then you say 'no' again. The third time a little thing goes off in your brain, 'I wish I'd said yes.' Then on the fourth time you just say 'yes' and you're back on it again. I came off something like 29 times." It wasn't until 1981, when he moved to Italy, that Baker kicked the drug for good. "That's when I got clear of it all. I moved to a little village in the middle of nowhere, where nobody spoke English. I got into olive farming. It was very rewarding, very hard work but very good therapy."

Perhaps it would have been easier to go to rehab? "No, no, no, no! There's only one person who can help an addict and that's an addict himself. The whole rehab thing is just a bloody con to make money and take advantage. The whole thing is nonsense." Baker has lost some of his physical power to age and infirmity, but he says: "With all my disabilities it's a miracle I can play at all, and I'm playing as well as ever. If I'm enjoying the music, that overrides everything. The pain goes away. But when I stop after a gig, having played an hour and a half, I'm thoroughly exhausted.