Ginger Baker

[panamagold]

Ginger Baker bids farewell aged 80. A good age to achieve.

This event took place during my tenure at London's Lyceum in 1971. He disbanded his 'Ginger Baker's Airforce' which included, Steve Winwood, Ric Grech, Jeanette Jacobs, Denny Laine, Phil Seamen, Alan White, Chris Wood, Graham Bond, Harold McNair and Remi Kabaka, sevaral months later.

The wage bill must have been phenomenal.

[bungeejumper]

I probably saw Ginger Baker playing in more bands than any other musician. In the Graham Bond Organisation (mid-sixties at Ronnie Scott's, where I mis-spent much of my youth); in Cream (of course); in Blind Faith (ditto - I sort-of knew Steve Winwood, who would often hang around our university lounge with Spencer Davis). And in the first incarnation of Air Force, at Birmingham Town Hall in 1970.

That was a bit of a drums line-up, with four drummers and a hefty African beat. The online credits don't recall it, but I am nearly sure that saxophonist Dudu Pukwana was in the line-up. (Later to form Assagai and Spear.) The way I recall it, GB intended at that time to retire from music by setting up a pan-African trucking operation, which sadly didn't prosper. (I believe their lorries got nicked, one by one.) But which brought him into contact with a lot of north and west African music.

Never knew he was in Hawkwind. You live and learn. But OMG, the way he could kick those double bass drums. I don't think anyone has ever rivalled it. The legacy of a youthful obsession with competitive cycling, so they say. Great for the calf muscles. RIP, GB.

BJ