Mickey Baker

Of all guitarists who helped transform tempo & blues into rock and roll & move, Mickey Baker was among the very most significant, ranking nearly on the amount of Chuck Berry and Bo Diddley. The reason why he wasn’t almost as well referred to as those legends is certainly that a lot of his function wasn’t released under his very own name, but as a support guitarist for most R&B and rock and roll & roll music artists. Baker originally aspired to be always a jazz musician, but considered calypso, mambo, and R&B, where in fact the most function could be discovered. In the first and middle-’50s, he do countless periods for Atlantic, Ruler, RCA, Decca, and OKeh, playing on such classics because the Drifters’ “Cash Honey” and “This kind of Evening,” Joe Turner’s “Tremble, Rattle & Move,” Ruth Brown’s “Mama, He Goodies Your Little girl Mean,” and Big Maybelle’s “GOOD DEAL of Shakin’ TAKING PLACE.” He also released several singles under his very own name, and produced a Latin jazz-tinged single record, Guitar Mambo. Baker’s greatest function, though, was documented as half of the duo Mickey & Sylvia. Their strike “Love Is Unusual,” in addition to several other unidentified but nearly similarly strong tracks, presented Baker’s keening, bluesy acoustic guitar riffs, that have been gutsier and much more piercing than most other things around in the past due ’50s. Mickey & Sylvia break up in the past due ’50s (though they documented on / off before middle of another 10 years), and Baker documented his best single recording, the all-instrumental The Wildest Acoustic guitar. In 1961, he required the man spoken component (generally assumed to become Ike Turner) on Ike & Tina Turner’s first strike, “It’s Gonna WORKOUT Fine.” Soon afterwards he relocated to France, producing several hard-to-find solo information and dealing with a whole lot of French pop and rock and roll performers, including Ronnie Parrot, the very best ’60s French rock and roll singer. He documented only sporadically following the middle-’60s. Mickey Baker passed away at his house in Montastruc-la-Conseillère, France on November 27, 2012, at age 87.