Duck Baker
A good question usually deserves a good answer. Ask
Duck Baker about “Seven Point One,” an original
composition included in this compilation, and he’ll probably
dismiss it as just another blues in E. But that’s just the
beginning of his reply.
“I think that most people don’t realize how amazingly
profound the twelve-bar structure is,” Baker says. “It’s the
great American form. Classical music is made up of long
and often unpredictable structures, where the twelve-bar
is the American equivalent of a haiku. I’ll listen to various
twelve-bar melody lines and I’m amazed at how that
structure works. Even Charlie Parker will have a feel like
Blind Lemon Jefferson. That’s deep.”
Baker’s musical education began in his teenage years
in Richmond, Virginia, where he befriended a ragtime piano
player named Buck Evans.
“Every year that goes by I’m more grateful that I met
this guy when I did,” Baker says. “He taught me so much
about American music and culture. He gave me the idea
that when you’re looking at music you’re looking at culture,
and that all things are related, not just country over here,
rockabilly over there, writers like Thomas Wolfe somewhere
else. He loaned me records by Louis Armstrong and Jelly
Roll Morton, and he basically let me know I was a middle
class fool who didn’t know a damn thing about music.”