[Dixielandjazz] Fwd: Another Kenny Baker--Peter Kerr

[Steve Voce]

On 04/08/2011 23:45, Marek Boym wrote:
> I'm forwarding this to the list since Kenny Baker was one of the best
> trumpet players anywhere.  He was even on some - not so great - Dixieland
> albums.  But he was a wonderful swing player.  I saw him imbuing life in a
> rather laclustre big band.  The band played for a while, and sounded bland.
> Then Baker joined it - and it started swinging like hell!
> A great musician.
> Cheers
This was the piece I wrote for The Independent when Kenny baker died.
Steve Voce

*Kenny Baker*

             'How are the teeth?' was always Kenny Baker's opening to
any conversation with Humphrey Lyttelton. It's perhaps to be expected that
older trumpet players are most concerned about the shipyard-like metal
constructions within their mouths that support one of the most important tools
of their trade.

Although he took his trumpet virtuosity for granted and never had the mien of a 'star',
Kenny Baker was more highly regarded throughout the world than any other
British jazz player was. He was so well known in the States that when Harry
James died James's executors asked Baker to come to America to take over the
Harry James Band. Although Baker declined he could have done the job with ease
and no doubt with considerably better musical taste than James had.

             During the war whilst in the RAF Baker was seconded to
Glenn Miller's Army Air Force Band as a temporary replacement for an American
trumpeter. Predictably the work was duck soup to Baker, and he very much
enjoyed playing with the American musicians. At the end of his spell with the
band Leading Aircraftsman Baker asked to see Major Glenn Miller. Admitted into
the presence, Baker said 'I just wanted to thank you for the chance to play
with such a fine band, sir.'   Miller
looked at him coldly. 'Stand to attention properly,' he said.

             Later Baker was to have happier experiences with American
artists when he worked for, amongst others, Bing Crosby, Frank Sinatra, Tony
Bennett, Benny Goodman, Billy May, Barbra Streisand, Nelson Riddle and Burt
Bacharach.   When he worked as an arranger
and trumpeter for a Benny Goodman recording session in London in November 1969,
there was a reversal of the Glenn Miller incident. Goodman, a strict
disciplinarian used to getting his way with the infamous steely 'BG Ray', told
Baker to change the tempo of one of the numbers. Baker refused, stared him
back, and directed the band to play the piece in his own way. The resultant
album "London Date", was the most exquisite of Goodman's later years.

Baker was
born at Withernsea, not far from the mouth of the Humber. His father played
saxophones and clarinet and his mother was a pianist. Already a voracious
musician, Kenny learned as a child piano, saxophones, violin and accordion. One
of his uncles gave him a tenor horn which he also played, and before long
switched to cornet. He played in the local Gospel Mission Band and later led
his own band in a local hotel.

When the
family moved to Hull the 14 year old Baker took work in a music shop and joined
the West Hull Silver Prize Band as solo cornet player. He and a friend who
played accordion and piano formed a duo that played in the local hotels. For
his first gig he was paid two half crowns, one of which his mother gave back to
him. He kept it all his life. When he was 15 the duo played in a radio
programme from Leeds called "Yorkshire Round-up", and this was the first of his
countless broadcasts for the BBC. He was by now drawn to jazz through the
recordings of the American giants, but played commercial music to earn his
living. He answered an advertisement to join the comedian Sandy Powell to tour
in variety. Eventually he went with Powell to London where they worked in the
West End for two weeks before, with the beginning of the war, the show closed.
Baker found work at the Streatham Locarno dance hall and soon joined Lew
Stone's band which was backing Cicely Courtnedge and Jack Hulbert in a show
called "Keep It Under Your Hat". He swiftly moved to other bands, including
those of Jack Hylton, Geraldo, Maurice Winnick and Ambrose. He became
particularly friendly with Bert Ambrose and although he had long left the band,
played on almost all of the records that Ambrose made during the Forties. When
he was 18 Baker had a flat off Leicester Square, but all night jam sessions at
the 400 Club meant that he saw little of it. But such night clubs were soon to
close, and one of the reasons given was that Englishmen in their cups might
have given away national secrets to the German spies who were thought to hang
around in such places. Baker joined Sid Millward's band to tour with Jack
Warner in a show called "Garrison Theatre". Baker volunteered for the RAF in
1942 and joined Fighter Command's military band at Hendon. Oddly, the band
normally only worked in the morning and Baker, with a living out pass, was free
from midday on to return to his flat and to work in various civilian bands in
the evenings.

             By now there were American service
bands in London, and Baker mixed with jazz musicians like Mel Powell, Peanuts
Hucko, Ray McKinley and Sam Donahue. Baker also worked in the American Base
Command Dance Band in 1943. "I wrote arrangements for them," he told me in a
1993 BBC North broadcast, "and they paid me in tobacco or whatever they could."
He and the trombonist Ted Heath were both impressed by the proficiency and
discipline of the American musicians, and Heath applied their standards when he
formed his own band, Ted Heath and his Music in May, 1945. Heath offered Baker
a job and, because he had work to go to, he was released from the RAF.   He became the band's lead trumpeter at 23,
staying until December 1948 while the band won large followings in the United
States and in Australia as well as in Britain. One of the band's first substantial
jobs was to provide the music for the film "London Town" (1946) which starred
Petula Clark and Sid Field and had an appearance by drummer Jack Parnell.
Parnell became a lifelong colleague and friend of Baker's. The band played a
famous and long running series of jazz concerts entitled "Sunday Night At The
London Palladium" and it was for one of these that Baker wrote his composition
and feature for his trumpet entitled "Bakerloo Non Stop". This exhilarating
piece was recorded and was hugely successful later when the band played in New
York's Carnegie Hall. Heath regularly featured a small group from within the
band called the Kenny Baker Swing Group.

             Eventually Baker felt the need for a new challenge and in
1949 started his own band which included some fine saxophone players -- Harry
Klein, Jimmy Skidmore, Vic Ash, and eventually the 16 year old Tubby Hayes. The
band coach was involved in a serious crash on tour in 1951 and there were
several injuries with Baker suffering a fractured right hand finger. This was a
potentially disastrous injury for a trumpet player, but he taught himself to
play with the remaining fingers and the tour went on. The band broke up when
Baker had to take a long period off playing to deal with a hernia.

             He returned to begin the most successful and rewarding series
of broadcasts ever undertaken by a British band. The producer of "The Goon
Show", Pat Dixon, invited Baker to form a band for a series on the BBC Light
Programme to be called "Let's Settle For Music". The emphasis was to be on
musical quality rather than "pop" sounds, and there were to be no vocals. An
Australian, Wilfred Thomas, presented the series, and Baker was given a free
hand, choosing the musicians, selecting the material and writing the music. He
developed a genius for instant arranging in the studio, and the ink on the
sheet music was often still wet when the band went on air. He was able to pick
the cream of the country's session musicians as regulars and, although
trombonist George Chisholm was the best known name, players like Harry Klein,
Keith Bird, Keith Christie, Tommy McQuater, Bill McGuffie, Allan Ganley, Phil
Seamen and Don Rendell were equally distinguished. The band regularly featured
E. O. "Poggy" Pogson, an eccentric multi instrumentalist who brought all kinds
of previously unheard instruments into the band.

The
broadcasts usually lasted for 40 or 50 minutes and, although originally
designed as a brief experimental series, "Let's Settle For Music" began on 19
April 1952 and lasted until 23 December 1958.
The BBC, even then belaboured by expense problems, kept trying to
dismantle the series, but the efforts of Dixon, powerful support from the
musical press and an enthusiastic following kept the series afloat.

During the
run, in 1952, he appeared for many weeks at the Aldwych Theatre providing live
music for Tennessee Williams's "A Streetcar Named Desire", directed by Laurence
Olivier and starring Vivien Leigh. The next year Baker formed a quartet that
included Stan Tracey on piano and had 18 year old Ruby Murray as its vocalist.
George Martin, who supervised its recordings, gave the group a recording
contract with the Parlophone label. In the same year Baker ghosted the music
for "Genevieve" , a film that had the glamorous star Kay Kendall apparently
playing hot trumpet in a night-club. (He was later to provide the music when
Norman Wisdom mimed the trumpet in the film "Trouble In Store" in the same
year. Baker also worked in variety again and for 20 weeks in 1955 played in a
Blackpool summer show with Morecambe and Wise. He was incessantly in demand for
studio work and appeared in all manner of radio and television programmes
including "Round The Horne", "The Generation Game", Michael Bentine's "It's A
Square World" and "The Avengers". He also worked with every combination of instruments
from quartet to symphony orchestra and made guest appearances with brass bands
and youth orchestras and provided the soundtrack music for Alan Plater's
television series "The Beiderbecke Affair" and "The Beiderbecke Tapes".

During the
'Eighties he toured with an all star group that he called "The Best Of British
Jazz". It included Jack Parnell and trombonist Don Lusher. Baker also toured
with the re-formed Ted Heath band led by
Don Lusher. In 1989 he was the key player in a prodigious recording of
jazz pieces associated with Louis Armstrong and he played in every one of "The
Muppets" series on television.

Tired of
touring, he went back to studio work, but it didn't appeal any more. "I don't
like to-day's studios with everyone screened off from each other," he told me
in a BBC North "Jazz Panorama". "Unless you get up and walk about you don't
know who you've been playing with half the time."

During the
last ten years Baker chose his work to enjoy himself. He collaborated with
author Robert Crosby in the book "Kenny Baker, The Life And Times Of A Jazz
Musician" (Evergreen, 1999). He happily took jazz jobs throughout the country,
averaging about four a week until he became ill a month ago. His power and
range on the trumpet remained undiminished and he was able to play easily and
convincingly with musicians who he had not met until five minutes before the
session began.

He had a
good system. being taken to his jobs in a camper van driven by his wife Sue. He
would arrive early, shave, eat and relax in the camper van, play the job and
then be driven home.

"I'll
retire when the 'phone stops ringing," he told Crosby. It never did.

Steve Voce

Kenny Baker, trumpeter,
bandleader, composer, arranger; born Withernsea, 1 March, 1921; survived by his
wife and daughter; died Chichester 7 December 1999.