Ginger Baker, one of the most innovative and influential drummers in rock music, has died at the age of 80.
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I haven't found time to post or write a journal entry for several weeks due to various stresses and strains with the upcoming launch party event and other domestic pressures, but I felt it necessary to take time to say something about Ginger Baker who was such a great musician and whom I saw live, many years before his Cream days. Ginger had a jazz drummer background but strayed into the orbit of '60s Rhythm and Blues when he joined the Graham Bond Organisation, a band who also featured John McLaughlin. I was fortunate enough to see the Graham Bond Organisation live at a concert in Leeds in the mid 1960s when they supported Chuck Berry at one of the City's cinemas. I attended the show with my school chum Ian Parkin and we were both highly impressed by the Graham Bond group but didn't realise, at that time, just how important a force for the later psychedelic rock/blues/improvisational scene Ginger would become. His work with Cream transformed what was possible from a three piece rock band and my own humble group in Wakefield at that time, ('Global Village,') owed much to Cream's influence and Ginger's drumming.
I won't dwell on Ginger's reputation for being a very difficult man. I guess others in the media will comment on that. I just want to say thank you to Ginger Baker for showing what is possible when you don't allow musical barriers or generic limitations to define what you do as a musician. God bless, rest in peace...