Not The First TimeRare and unissued Duck Baker recordings 1977-1989
Fulica Records – release date July 12th 2021
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Not The First Time: rare & unissued Duck Baker recordings, 1977-1989
Duck Baker developed his approach to fingerpicking as a youngster in Richmond, VA. He was self-taught, but influenced by what he heard in local coffeehouses, and by his experience playing in rock and blues bands, as well as by recordings. He gravitated towards nylon strings, for instance, not because of classical tradition but because he was attracted to the fiery virtuosity of flamenco guitarists, as well as the sound of the Indian veena. His biggest direct influence was pianist Buck Evans, who introduced Baker to ragtime and early jazz, and impressed upon him the fact that such categories as blues, old-time music, and even jazz were superficial constructs, and that all American vernacular styles were basically one kind of music. Baker’s performing horizons expanded greatly when he moved to San Francisco in 1973. He joined a bluegrass band and formed a duo playing swing jazz with guitarist Thom Keats, and before long the two were being employed by local horn players for Bay Area gigs. Much of the solo repertoire Baker developed in those days was learned either with Keats or at swing gigs.
When Baker moved to England in 1978, he had been touring there regularly for a couple of years, and had already connected with such heavy-hitting British guitarists as Davy Graham, Bert Jansch, and John Renbourn. This involvement with the prime movers of the “folk baroque” style helped Baker refine his approach. In some ways, he took what Graham and Renbourn were doing further than any of the British guitarists who followed them. It’s not that Baker wasn’t already aimed towards some of the same goals – he had hit on the idea of modal improvisation on traditional tunes without ever having heard Graham’s epochal “She Moves Through The Fair”, for instance, and his interest in modern jazz went beyond Davy’s. But seeing first-hand how Graham arranged tunes like Junior Mance’s “Jubilation” or Carl Perkins’ “Grooveyard” gave Duck a template for his own approach to modern jazz, which would continue to evolve in later years. Baker’s later arrangements of the complex music of pianists like Herbie Nichols and Thelonious Monk owe almost nothing to any jazz guitarists, but can easily be seen as an extension of the approach Graham had taken to jazz material. Nor was the relationship entirely a one-way street. Davy based his version of the Irish set dance “The Blackbird” on what Duck had come up with, and even incorporated a section Baker had added to Graham’s “Forty Ton Parachute” into his own performances.
Baker and Renbourn were even closer. It was Duck’s interest in Abdullah Ibrahim and Randy Weston that led to John’s great arrangements of “Cherry” and “Little Niles,” and some of Renbourn’s approach to arranging rubbed off on Baker. Renbourn seems to be the only person to have noted in print how Baker’s playing in the 1980’s reflected what Graham and Bert Jansch had done, but this was logical enough; by that time he and Duck were doing and lot of touring together. Their mutual interests included not just music but Irish writers like James Stephens and Flann O’Brien, as well as certain beverages that O’Brien would have approved of. Among the things Renbourn encouraged Baker to do was continue to refine his use of modal improvisation, something we hear on four tunes on this record: “Allegheny County”, “Southern Cross”, “You Are My Sunshine”, and “Lord Renbourn”. The melody of this last, playfully titled tune, is reminiscent of the Early Music that Renbourn helped bring into the consciousness of the folk world of the 1960s, but the improvised section was intended as part of an ongoing dialogue involving what kinds of music could or could not be effectively referenced on guitar. What kinds of Irish music really worked? How about strathspeys of the Scottish fiddlers, or even the piobaireachd of the pipers? Fortunately a demo recording of this remarkable composition has turned up, after having been lost for many years.
The gospel/soul flavoring of “Waltz on Sunday” was right up Davy Graham’s alley, but the right hand slapping on this one is something Duck picked up from fellow American John Miller. The same technique provides the underpinning for “The Dirtman Cometh,” which Baker says he wrote while hanging out with another musical comrade-in-arms, Jerry Ricks, when both were living in Turin, Italy, in the early 1980s. Around this same time Duck and then-local guitarist Peppino D’Agostino travelled to Florence to record some tracks for an Italian anthology. Their one recorded duo, “Short Shrift” is included here, along with a playful solo of Duck’s called “The Vantay Crawl”. Other tracks that are lighter in mood include three that were originally recorded in the 1970s for Kicking Mule, “Patricia Rag”, “Sweet Lorraine”, and “If Only Someone Would Love Me”. “Patricia” was written by Joseph Lamb and was originally issued on an anthology called Masters of Ragtime Guitar (KM 146), but the other two are swing arrangements that were never issued by the label and were forgotten until they turned up unexpectedly a couple of years ago. “Buck the Nightingale” was the stage moniker of Buck Evans, the ragtime pianist who had mentored Baker during the mid-1960s, though the tune was written later.
Most of the recordings here come from demos made after Duck Baker returned to San Francisco in 1986. He was managed at that point by Bob Fisher, who – like John Renbourn – felt that Duck should revisit tunes like “Allegheny County” and “Southern Cross.” Bob also suggested an arrangement of “The Minstrel Boy”, though he was not expecting the dark, antiwar version Baker produced. This is another one thought to have been lost until a demo tape turned up in storage. (The tuning here is C-G-D-G-B-E, by the way; everything else is either in standard or D-A-D-G-B-E.) Fisher also suggested rerecording “Plymouth Rock”, which like all of the remakes here is superior to the original recording. “Lefty and Me” and the Jerry Reed-ish “Seven Point One” (which is played on a Mexican raquinto guitar) date from the same demo session that produced “Buck the Nightingale,” while the more somber “Not The First Time” was included on an obscure German release in the mid-1980s. The music on this collection is drawn from recordings made in seven studios in four different countries over a span of a dozen years, but it paints a coherent picture of Duck Baker’s development from a hotshot young fingerpicker to an polished master who, along with a handful of contemporaries like Woody Mann, Tim Sparks, and Eric Lugosch, were aiming to elevate American fingerstyle guitar music towards a more serious level.
Michael Crane
San Francisco
December, 2019
Track Listing:
| 01 | Plymouth Rock | 3:26 | |
| 02 | Allegheny County | (McCorison, Baker) | 4:01 |
| 03 | Sweet Lorraine | (Burwell-Parish) | 2:29 |
| 04 | The Vantay Crawl | 2:22 | |
| 05 | Seven Point One | 1:40 | |
| 06 | Lord Renbourn | 3:47 | |
| 07 | The Dirtman Cometh | 2:14 | |
| 08 | The Minstrel Boy | (traditional) | 3:28 |
| 09 | Lefty and Me | 2:18 | |
| 10 | Not The First Time | 2:46 | |
| 11 | Southern Cross | 4:40 | |
| 12 | Patricia Rag | (Lamb) | 1:51 |
| 13 | Waltz on Sunday | 4:21 | |
| 14 | Buck the Nightingale | 2:25 | |
| 15 | You Are My Sunshine | (Davis) | 4:06 |
| 16 | If Only Someone Would Love Me | (Morton) | 1:29 |
| 17 | Short Shrift | (Baker, D’Agostino) | 3:42 |
All compositions by Duck Baker except where noted.
Duck Baker, steel string guitar (1, 8, 9, 11), raquinto guitar (track 5) and flamenco guitar (all other tracks)
add Peppino D’Agostino, steel string guitar, track 17
3, 12, 16 recorded at Livingston Studios, Barnet, 1977, Nic Kinsey, engineer, Stefan Grossman, producer
6 recorded at Bob Kerr’s studio, Putney, London, early 1981, Bob Kerr, engineer
15 recorded in Richmond, Surrey, spring 1981, used by permission of Martin Davidson, Emanem Records
4, 17 recorded spring 1983, Planet Sound, Florence, Italy, Stefano Lugli, engineer, Giovanni Unterberger, producer, used by permission of Giovanni Unterberger
10, 13 recorded 1984, Heidelberg, Germany
2 recorded August 27, 1987, Mobius Music, San Francisco, CA, Oliver de Cicco, engineer, produced by Bob Fisher
1, 7, 8, 11 recorded March 22, 1989, Mobius Music, San Francisco, CA, Oliver de Cicco, engineer, produced by Bob Fisher
5, 9, 14 recorded late 1989, Hal’s Half-Acre, San Francisco, CA, Duck Baker, engineer
Produced by Duck Baker and Luigi Maramotti
Cover photograph by Linda Fitzgerald-Moore
Design by Saana Baker