The legendary drummer of Cream has died. I admit that I'm not much of a Cream fan. Cream was a little before my time. But, I appreciated their radio hits and I think I had an album of theirs back in the day (from my mail album club membership). I will say I did not understand the true genius of Ginger Baker and his drumming until I saw him perform his drum solo during the Cream reunion show filmed at Royal Albert Hall in 2005 that I caught on AXS TV within the last year. Clearly, Cream had a big influence on a lot of fans/musicians alike and were clearly unique...inducted into the RRHOF in 1993. The thing I also like about Cream is they were a 3 member band (not unlike my favorite band of all-time...Rush). My first thoughts when it came to Cream was always Clapton. But, clearly, I was overlooking the talents of Baker mainly because I wasn't paying enough attention. Silly me. RIP
God bless you German tv of the 70s for being anal about preserving your archives. Great film quality. Ginger Bakers Airforce maybe wasnt the best music over his career, but great video of the man in action.
There’s a good documentary on Netflix about Baker. Well not sure if it’s there anymore. But dude was ornery to say the least. Heck of a drummer though.
The best part of that reunion gig is Jack Bruce crushing that fretless bass while blasting the vocals. Good show.
full documentary is on youtube... what a selfish trainwreck of a human being, but a fantastic, pure musician. he had abandoned his family and moved to nigeria in the early 70's and did a couple records with fela kuti, which are pretty good. that was my favorite part of the documentary. him and fela had a falling out when ginger took up polo and started playing at the british colonial elites country clubs. ginger and tony allen with some nice poly-rhythmic double drums. ginger produced this record - this song is funny b/c the title came from when ginger was in a car race and some other dude drove off the road and crashed...ginger drove by and mockingly yelled at him "hahaha - he miss road".
