Ginger Baker

Rock legend and drummer extraordinaire Ginger Baker has passed away at age 80. You can see his virtuosity in the above drum "battle" with Art Blakley. Ginger Baker invented the drum battle. And the rock drum solo too!

You can get a really good idea of who Ginger Baker was (including who he was as a human being - hint not great) and his place rock history from the documentary Beware of Mr. Baker.

Lefsetz also has a nice appreciation of Ginger Baker's place in rock history.

Ginger Baker

You may have seen Will Ferrell / Chad Smith (drummer for the Red Hot Chilli Peppers) have their "Drum Off" last week. What you might not realize is that the bit was inspired by drummer Ginger Baker. The band Cream was before my time and even though I'd heard the name Ginger Baker hundreds of times - I didn't know who he was. I didn't even know he was a drummer. Then I saw the documentary Beware Mr. Baker. In the documentary Chad Smith talks about Baker's legendary "Drum Battles" with the great Jazz drummers of the time. The documentary was very good and I came away with an appreciation of how great and ground breaking Ginger Baker was as a drummer. And how awful he was as a human being.