Happy Birthday! Cream's Ginger Baker Has Turned 80

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Yesterday Ginger Baker of Cream and Blind Faith fame celebrated his 80th birthday. In this blog post, we go in brief on his life.

He was born Peter Edward Baker on August 19, 1939 in London. His mother held a tobacco shop and his father was a bricklayer employed by Baker's grandfather. Ginger Baker began playing drums at the age of 15, but at twenty started taking former lessons. In 1962 he started his own group, The Graham Bond Organization with future Cream bandmate Jack Bruce and Baker's future Air Force bandmate Grahm Bond.

In 1965, the Graham Bond Organization split. Baker and Bruce hooked up with legendary guitarist Eric Clapton of John Mayall and the Bluesbreakers fame and made four records with them: 1966's Fresh Cream, 1967's Disreali Gears, which contained their signature song, Sunshine of Your Love 1968's Wheels of Fire featuring their signature hits White Room, Crossroads, and Born Under a Bad Sign - whose riff Goran Bregovich adopted in his band, Bijelo Dugme's (White Button's) hit Ove Chu Nochi Nachi Blues (Tonight, I will Find The Blues).

Their 1969 record, Goodbye featured the hit Badge referring to the tuning of the strings, B-A-D-G-E. The track features George Harrison playing rhythm guitar as thanks to Eric Clapton playing lead guitar on the Harrison-penned, 1968 Beatles hit, While my Guitar Gently Weeps. Towards the end of '69, Cream played a few shows at the Royal Albert Hall in London as a farewell and disbanded by 1970.

Ginger Baker and Eric Clapton then formed Blind Faith with Spencer Davis Group/Traffic veteran Steve Winwood (who at the time was actually being asked by Stills and Nash to join them in CSN, but refused due to getting started with Blind Faith). Blind Faith was rather short-lived and only had one hit, In The Presence of the Lord.

After Blind Faith, Ginger Baker formed Ginger Baker's Air Force. Though they where short-lived, they featured many former and future band alumni: Graham Bond, Steve Winwood (later to join Traffic), Alan White (who joined Yes in 1972), Denny Laine (of Moody Blues fame who hooked up with Paul and Linda McCartney to later form Wings), and Phil Seamen, a notorious post WWII jazz drummer who actually give Ginger Baker his lessons. While the project only went on to 1971, and yieleded one rather unsuccessful album, Ginger Baker has been back at it since 2015 albeit as a solo project.

In 1971, Baker relocated to Nigeria's former capity city, Lagos, to open his own studio. ARC studio was officially opened at the beginning of 1973 and lasted for a few years. Noteably, Paul McCartney and Wings recorded Picasso's Last Words for their successful 1973 record Band on The Run. Ginger Baker had been in Nigeria in hopes of expanding African music and Wings were excited to record in Lagos despite the poor situation in the nation at the time. Baker invited Macca to come in and record and Macca agreed to one day's worth of sessions.

Since the 1980s, Baker cleaned himself up and played little music apart from the short-lived project, Haywinds. In the 90s, he moved to the US and made some TV appearances  and such.

In May 2005, Baker, Bruce, and Clapton reunited as Cream for a four-night residency at the Royal Albert Hall (playing May 2-3, and May 5-6). The recorded and captured the performance (which is great and turned me on to a lot of their music) as a double live CD/DVD issued in 2006. 2006 also saw a handful of US shows with Cream.

 Despite being invited, Cream did not play at the Ahmet Ertegun tribute concert in December 2007 with Led Zeppelin taking the bill. As for the future, Jack Bruce died in May 2014 due to heart complications and Baker and Clapton have stated that Cream are done. Clapton still, however, performs several Cream songs live such as Crossroads, White Room, and Badge.

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