There’s No Time Like The Pastguitar solos, 1988 – 2016
Fulica Records FCD-109 December 2024
Available from the Online Store as:
Tracks:
All tracks composed by Duck Baker except where indicated.
Tracks 13-15 recorded Summer, 1988; home studio of Dix Bruce, Concord, CA; Dix Bruce, engineer
Track 3 recorded May, 1993; Why Not Studios, Berkeley, CA, Dave Ogden, engineer
Tracks 4, 12 recorded 1995; Mix-O-Lydian Studios, Lafayatte NJ; Don Sternecker, engineer
Tracks 1, 6 recorded November, 2003; Arabica Studio, Minneapolis, Minnesota, Dave Hull, engineer
Tracks 7, 9, 10, 11 recorded in 2006; Boschi di Balso, Balso RE, Italy; Massimo Gatti, engineer; produced by Luigi Maramotti
Track 16 recorded March 23, 2009; KUSF radio, San Francisco, CA; during interview with Teja Gerkin.
Track 2 recorded January 7, 2011; Freight & Coffeehouse, Berkeley, CA
Tracks 17, 18 Duck Baker home recordings, 2013
Tracks 5, 8 recorded 11/2016; Boschi di Balso, Balso RE; Italy, Massimo Gatti, engineer;
produced by Luigi Maramotti
Cover photo of an old man on the beach near Pointe de L’Église, NovaScotia, taken by Lynn Abbott in August, 1993
Graphics by Scott Friedlander
D.B. portrait photograph by Peter Gannushkin
Mastered by Joe Lizzi at van Alst Studio, Long Island City, NY
duckbaker.com
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This program of previously unissued recordings comes from a variety of sources, including demo sessions, tunes that wouldn’t fit on records for which they were recorded, a live track, a radio broadcast, and a couple of home recordings. The tunes were recorded over a nearly 30-year span, but in a way represent a “new” Duck Baker record for fingerstyle guitar fans, since only four of them ever came out before as solos. Audio quality ranges from excellent (the two pieces recorded by Dakota Dave Hull) to marginal (the last three tracks) but is generally pretty good.
For the most part, these are either jazz or jazzy tunes that feature improvisation, and most of them are original compositions. There are four covers of jazz standards associated with great saxophonists: Charlie Parker’s “Confirmation,” John Coltrane’s “Mr. Syms,” Sonny Rollins’ “Valse Hot” and another tune associated with Rollins, “Fire Down Below.” (Rollins recorded the latter as “St. Thomas” but it’s a traditional Caribbean tune descended from an English folk song.) I’ve also included two other traditional tunes. The harmonic references in my version of “Shenandoah” are so oblique that I just use the arrangement as a basis for free improvisation, while “Jerusalem, My Happy Home” gets a much straighter interpretation. I grew up singing this one in church. I always thought it was a very strong melody, but only learned later that it had been collected by Annabel Morris Buchanan and published in her Folk Hymns of America. Why such a great melody has been completely ignored by folk singers is a mystery to me.
“Om Min Syster” came from what I took to be an LP of Swedish folk music by someone named Benny Andersson, who was shown on the cover playing an accordion. The style turned out not to be strictly traditional, but I kept the LP because of this one gorgeous melody. I discovered only later that Andersson was a founding member of ABBA. Had I known that, I would probably never have bought the record, and missed a tune that should not be missed.
No fewer than six of the originals make use of the 12-bar blues format. “DB XII E” is a basic 3-chord special that was improvised during an unreleased 1993 recording session with Molly Andrews and Hal Hughes, while the two singers were resting their vocal chords. The middle section of “His And Her Blues” is another 3-chorder, but the A minor theme that begins and ends the piece is not a blues except perhaps in feeling. “Making Ends Meet,” “Shiftless,” “Slippin’ And Slidin”‘ and “U Mest Mutrein” are all jazz blues numbers with more complex harmonic progressions. This last title means “master of the starter motor” in Barese dialect. It was named in honor of a local mechanic in Trani (near Bari) who managed to make a replacement out of spare parts when the starter motor in the band van gave out, while I was touring southern Italy with the Bermuda Acoustic Trio in 2010. Another blues, though not a 12-bar, is “Little Larry,” a tip of the hat to guitarist Larry McCullough, who was a friend and bandmate from Richmond, Virginia when we were teenagers in the 1960s. Larry was always a “natural” when it came to blues.
I think “There’s No Time Like The Past” is one of my best jazz ballads and the only one in F minor. I decided to release this home recording because I like the way the middle voicings jump out when it’s played solo. “Old World” was written in the mid-1980s when I was listening to a lot of traditional African music, and “Dance Me Outside” dates from a few years earlier, but I never worked it into the regular repertoire. I did record a version for a demo in 1982 that was released 40 years later (Contra Costa Dance), and then revisited it with a different approach on another demo in 1988. Finally, the unabashedly sentimental “A Shining Year” was commissioned to celebrate the 10th wedding anniversary of John and Debbie Kissell in 1995. As of 2024 the Kissells are still celebrating anniversaries, and I still accept commissions!
Duck Baker
Reading, Berks – August, 2024