Farewell, Ginger Baker

Easily one of the most influential drummers of sixties rock, Ginger Baker was also one of the wildest. Yet his seeming lack of discipline--Baker was known to take 12-minute drum solos--was grounded in a much stricter approach to his music than the more genuinely chaotic Keith Moon and his ilk. Baker took his music dead seriously despite an out-of-control personality that saw him come to blows with bandmate Jack Bruce and threaten his own documentarian Jay Bulger on camera at the outset of Beware of Mr. Baker. Ginger Baker was a studied jazz drummer who had the technique to back up the solos. He was also a stunningly powerful player as evidenced in his work with Cream and Blind Faith, and a surprisingly whimsical songwriter capable of whipping up such lovable Cream tunes as "Blue Condition","Pressed Rat and Warthog", and "What a Bringdown". Baker had been having serious physical issues for years, including chronic pulmonary disease and osteoarthritis, and underwent open heart surgery three years ago. Over the past few months, his health continued to degenerate, and Ginger Baker died today at the age of 80.

Review: Cream's 'Fresh Cream' Super-Deluxe Edition

After picking up a musty old copy of Heavy Cream for a buck at my local record store recently, I had an unpleasant revelation while listening to “I Feel Free” through headphones for the first time in a long time: the stereo mix is absolutely awful. The rhythm guitars, bass, and drums are all shoved off to the right-hand channel, vocals are centered, and tambourine is the sole occupant of the left channel for much of the track. Suddenly, one of my favorite pieces of psychedelic pop was reduced to a limp noodle. Tears were shed. Dreams were dashed. Heavy Cream curdled.

The timing of UMe’s Super Deluxe Edition of Fresh Cream couldn’t have been better for me, because the quadruple-disc set’s anchor is Cream’s debut in its mono mix long unavailable in the States. No album was as mighty as Fresh Cream in 1966, and the wonky separation of its stereo incarnation did a complete disservice to that considerable distinction. Great tracks such as “I Feel Free” (from the U.S. version), “Spoonful” (from the UK version), “I’m So Glad”, “Cat’s Squirrel”, “Sweet Wine”, “N.S.U.”, and “Sleepy Time Time” are restored to their original power, Baker, Bruce, and Clapton booming as a unified unit as they were always meant to. The set includes the album’s stereo mix, but there’s really no reason to ever bother with that again.

The Fresh Cream Super Deluxe Edition also includes stereo and mono mixes of the underrated contemporary tracks “Wrapping Paper” and “The Coffee Song” (a new and particularly miserable stereo mix has everything but the sporadic lead guitar outbursts hard-panned to the right). Elsewhere on the mono first disc and stereo second one are alternate masters and mixes, though none of them are particularly revelatory.

The most radical alternates are bunched on the third disc, which includes substantially different early versions of “The Coffee Song”, “Sweet Wine”, “Rollin’ and Tumblin’”, “Toad”, and “I Feel Fine” (with a hilariously dinky vocal arrangement and dummy lyrics). There are a couple of so-so outtakes— “You Make Me Feel”, previously released on the Those Were the Days box set, and an awkwardly stop-starting vocal-deprived blues called “Beauty Queen”—and a big clutch of worthwhile BBC recordings that were mostly released thirteen years ago on the BBC Sessions CD (versions of “Steppin’Out” and “Sleepy Time Time” are exclusive to this new set). I couldn’t assess the Blu-Ray Audio version of the original mono album because this fourth disc was not included in the review package I received (neither was the 64-page hardback book notated by David Fricke). As is often the case with Super Deluxe Editions, there’s redundancy and bloat, but that mono mix of Fresh Cream remains a powerful selling point in more ways than one. Don’t expect to find it for a buck at your local record store, though.

July 19, 2010: Psychobabble recommends ‘Jack Bruce: Composing Himself’

In the introduction to Composing Himself: Jack Bruce (Jaw Bone Press), Harry Shapiro explains that when he told a friend he was writing Bruce’s biography, the friend asked, “Well, what are you going to write about after Cream?” In some perfect alternate universe, such a question would never be asked. Jack Bruce’s shiver-inducing tenor, manic bass playing, and freaky songwriting defined Cream far more than anything Eric Clapton contributed to the band, and Bruce’s first solo album, Songs for a Tailor, was far more adventurous than any of Clapton’s. Still, the guitarist went on to an extremely popular and successful post-Cream career while Bruce’s ever eclectic work was only familiar to fanatics. Reams of text have been scribbled about Slow Hand—and even a good deal has been laid down regarding deranged Cream drummer Ginger Baker—while Bruce’s life and work has received a lot less scrutiny. Chances are Composing Himself will not only be the first but the final biography focusing solely on Jack Bruce. Fortunately, it gets the job done well enough that no other will be necessary.


Probably since so much has been written about Cream, Shapiro doesn’t dwell on that band too much here. The group’s existence is limited to roughly 30 pages of this 300-page book, although their legend looms over much of what proceeds. This leaves plenty of room to discuss Jack’s early career as a serious jazz musician and a journeyman with crucial British blues groups like The Graham Bond Organization, John Mayall’s Bluesbreakers, and Manfred Mann and his numerous—and often quite bizarre—projects following the demise of Cream in ’69. The cast of characters is enormous, including Mick Taylor, Lou Reed, Fela Kuti, Jim Keltner, Ringo Starr, Leslie West, and Todd Rundgren. The breadth of his work is even more expansive: hard rock jam bands and jazz-fusion or avant garde groups, and somewhat sadly, a host of nostalgia groups that include a Beatles cover band. Bruce’s personal life is equally varied: a devout left-winger of Scottish Communist stock in a largely right-wing, English Rock world (no pro-Enoch Powell on-stage rants from Bruce, friends!), a longtime heroin-addict, an occasional dabbler in theater.

Shaprio’s writing is solid and supported by Bruce’s close involvement (this is one of those “authorized” biographies), multiple interview sources, and a quite good forward by Clapton, which makes some of the book’s stranger detours not only palatable but mesmerizing. There is a nightmarish interlude at a Mafioso’s compound where famed session pianist Nicky Hopkins is being held prisoner, possibly by black magic, and Bruce’s extended hallucination following liver surgery. Some of this stuff would not work if dropped in a less assured book. Here, it adds some extra color to an already fascinating tale.