Duck Baker – The Most Amazing Jazz Music Guitar Personality Ever!
Guitar player Duck Baker was born Richard R. Baker IV in Washington, DC in 1949 and grew up in Richmond, Virginia. His teen years were dedicated to playing guitar with rock and roll and blues bands before becoming interested in acoustic guitar fingerpicking in local coffeehouses. Ragtime piano performer Buck Evans was an important influence on Baker’s developing interests, which by the time he moved to San Francisco in 1973 included piano rags, blues, old-time country, Cajun, bluegrass, and New Orleans jazz. That wide range inspired the title of his first solo guitar album “There’s Something For Everyone In America” that was printed in 1976. Throughout the next 4 years, Duck cut several more solo jazz guitar music albums which includes one dedicated to swing jazz, one to contemporary jazz, and one to Celtic tunes while appearing on 9 others. He additionally published a collection of jazz guitar tabs and jazz guitar tablatures arranged for fingerstyle guitar and toured continuously through America, Canada, Europe, and Australia. He changed addresses just about as frequently finally ending up in Europe for a lot of the ’80s. He came back to San Francisco in 1987 and then relocated to Virginia in 1991.
A lot of his more recent solo guitar recordings have featured his own compositions – a facet of his creativity which has sparked particular praise from other guitar performers. Even though Duck Baker’s insistence on arranging and performing several different types of tunes on the guitar, from medieval European Christmas carols to avant garde jazz, has made him somewhat tricky for the press to categorize – he definitely has attained the respect of his guitar playing peers! A list of musicians with whom he has been connected professionally in performance or on records would include blues men Charlie Musselwhite and Jerry Ricks, bluegrassers Tim O’Brien and Dan Crary, traditionalists Ali Anderson and Brian MacNeil, new music icon John Zron, rock legend J. J. Cale, and jug band king Jim Kweskin.
Duck Baker has additionally been a seminal personality and influence in the bringing of conventional Irish tunes to the fingerstyle acoustic guitar. Duck is one of those rare musicians who doesn’t draw upon the repertoire of his primary instrument for musical raw material, but rather discovers ideas in the broader music stream and then shapes them to the sensibilities of the guitar. From the application of that expertise comes his acknowledged success at transcribing and arranging Irish fiddle, pipe, and harp compositions for the guitar. His famous, but not widely distributed, 1980 record “Kid On The Mountain” outlined a stylistic approach that eschews any cosmetic prettiness of tone and concentrates instead on the uniqueness of stark, open harmonies, and complicated interwoven bass lines. That record was the first to introduce to many guitar performers in America playable, solo fingerstyle guitar arrangements of some important Irish pieces, a couple of which include “The Blarney Pilgrim,” “Morgan Magan” and “The Duke of Fife’s Welcome to Deeside.”
Though that record is long out of print, quite a few of the landmark fingerstyle guitar versions found there have been reissued on a variety of CD collections. Fortunately for aspiring guitarists, Duck has gone on to publish a lot of guitar tab books and DVD programs which present his jazz, ragtime, fiddle, and Celtic solo fingerstyle guitar compositions.
Peabody Conservatory trained guitarist Steven Herron helps guitar players become better guitarists. His company ChordMelody.com features an enormous selection of jazz guitar tablatures
as well as instructional DVDs by Duck Baker himself. Find out more and claim Steven’s popular free monthly guitar lesson e-course available at: =>
Duck Baker guitar tabs
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