Various Blam! - NYC R&B Sessions 1953 - 1961 (LP)

Mickey Baker's story is in many ways typical of a thousand aspiring black men who wanted something more from life than the cards they had been dealt. Many turned to sport while others had a talent for music and this is where Mickey's destiny lay. He was born 15 October 1925 in Louisville. Kentucky to an Africa-American mother and a mainly absent father of Scottish-Irish descent whose only contribution to Mickey's life seems to have been to name him McHo.ton Baker after some distant ancestor. His mother, who had her own emotional problems, couldn't cope with her wild child and after a spot of trouble involving the theft of $3000 worth of clothes at the age 11 Mickey was sent to an orphanage for 3 years. While hanging out in his uncle's juke joint Mickey- had acquired a taste for the blues and at the orphanage he took an interest in playing trumpet and trombone.

At an early age Mickey- began to ramble, first to nearby St. Louis. then Chicago and finally in 1945, at the age of twenty to New York City. Here he took menial jobs but still aimed to break into music somehow and saved to purchase an instrument. His first choice was a trumpet but brass instruments were expensive and he ended up with a pawnshop guitar. Determined to succeed, he studied diligently first with it teach yourself instruction book and then later from lessons with jazz guitarist Rector Bailey from whom Baker's love of jazz developed. 1949 found Mickey playing modern jazz in Jimmy Neely's band but barely scratching out a living. While touring California he experienced the blues guitar of T-bone Walker and Pee Wee Crayton and was struck by the fame and fortune they were achieving with their more straight-forward style of music and determined to give it a go when he returned to the Big Apple. His jazz buddies didn't like this change of direction one bit but when they accused him of deserting them he responded 'I want to eat pork chops, man. Its sick of eating hot dogs' and later reminisced 'I stopped playing jazz.

I went to playing rock and roll and I got fat!' By 1951 Baker was gaining it foothold in the recording world playing behind vocalist Billy Valentine and in 1952 he cut his first pair of instrumentals, the bluesy 'Riverboat' and the uptempo Mambo'. under his own name. He never swred anything like a hit during this period and his reputation . the hottest r&b guitarist in New York rests on his work with other acts. Throughout the fifties Baker played on a dazzling array of classic r&b and r&r numbers. Just a brief dip into his bag reveals a veritable treasure trove: Little Willie John's 'I Need Your Love So Bad', The Drifters' 'Money Honey'; Chuck Willis'  'It's Too Late'; Young Jessie's 'Hit Git And Split' to name but four. Mickey's exciting and incisive playing could improve a classic and make a poor song seem good. His style was constantly inventive and never cliched and at times it could be outrageous as on the Coasters' 'I'm A Hog For You Baby' where his solo consists of 42 identical single string notes. For anybody who was anybody recording in New York, Mickey Baker win the first call guitarist. `Once I started doing those records, they paid S41.50 a session.' he later said. 'So once I started doing that, if you do two record sessions a day, you've already made half the money you're gonna make in a wank'.

Baker also recorded as Big Red McHouston (with Larry Dale on vocal) and as Mickey 'Guitar' Baker on a trio of instrumental singles for the Rainbow' label. A hit record in his own name, however, eluded him until he became acquainted with Little Sylvia Vanderpool at a 1953 sission and they developed it platonic, guitar tt.cher-pupil relationship. After a couple of singles . Mickey And Silvia on Rainbow without success they finally struck gold with their second Groove single, the glorious 'Love Is Strange' which contains an absolutely stunning guitar solo by Mickey'. A further hit followed for the duo but then record success tailed off. They toured constantly and argued frequently. Sylvia married business man Joe Robinson and in 1958 Mickey & Sylvia went their separate ways.

Baker very quickly teamed up with a replacement Sylvia in the form of Kitty Noble and as Mickey And Kitty cut a trio of singles for Atlantic during 1959 with little success. Mickey also waxed an instrumental album for Atlantic titled 'The Wildest Guitar' which despite its name and the odd rocker like 'Milk Train' was a pretty tame affair lacking the bite of his earlier work. In 1960, RCA tempted Mickey & Sylvia back into the studio with a $10000 advance which didn't pay dividends for the company as no hits ensued. One Mickey And Sylvia song which inexplicably remained in the can resurfaced when Ike and Tina Turner cut it the following year. 'It's Gonna Work Out Fine' became a big hit (#14 pop and No. 2 r&b in Billboard's charts) for Ike and Tina which ironically had Mickey Baker playing the Ike part in the duet with Tina and Sylvia Robinson playing the distinctive shimmering guitar. In 1961 Mickey and Sylvia launched their own Willow label which was distributed by King Records of Cincinnati and immediately scored a hit with 'Baby You're So Fine', a revival of Joe and Ann's 'Gee Baby • of the previous year. This was, however, to be their only Willow success and in 1962 the pair parted and Mickey and his wife Barbara relocated to Paris.

Mickey continued to record in Europe and he even got back with Sylvia in late 1964 / 1965 to cut three singles for RCA but no hits transpired and he was soon back in France. Baker continued to cut albums in Paris as a named artist and with visiting artist like Jimmy Rogers and the Aces (Black & Blue). He dipped back into country blues on the album McHouston Baker - Mississippi Delta Blues (Blue Star) which was recorded in l_ondon and he returned to his first love on the Jazz Rock Guitar album (Kicking Mule) which even strayed into the Classics. Mickey, retired to the south of France, living comfortably on the income from the many songs he wrote mainly under the pseudonym S. Gibson and his publishing company Ben-Ghazi.

Sadly, Mickey Baker died aged 87, of heart and kidney- failure. on the 27 November 2012 at his home in Montastruc-la-Conscillere, near Toulouse in southtern France. In this exciting selection of music, much of which is reissued here for the first time, we present Mickey.. a vocalist and guitarist in many musical genres - blues, r&b. rock and roll, jazz and gospel.