Fingerstyle Jazz Guitar

Like most kids his age, he was interested in playing
electric rock and roll before his fancy turned to the acoustic
guitar and fingerpicking.
“I think playing in rock bands is the best way for a kid
to learn to play guitar,” Baker says. “You have all these
high-brow academic jazz courses for young people, but
you’ve gotta crawl before you can walk. If you can’t
effectively improvise a blues in E, how in the hell are you
going to play ‘Giant Steps’? I learned to play all the dopey
stuff 15 year-olds liked to play back then, like ‘Louie Louie.’
Buck Evans kicked my ass and said ‘this is shit you’re
listening to.’ He got me listening to Eddie Lang and Lonnie
Johnson. It was actually a logical step to go from playing
rock, to playing blues, to improvising on ‘Sweet Georgia
Brown.’ As I developed my solo thing, it was also logical
for me to arrange old tunes by Jelly Roll, with improvised
sections. I started doing that around age 17. Fortunately,
there are no recordings of me from that period.”
Baker’s version of “Back Home In Indiana” is a perfect
example of his approach to fingerpicking a jazz standard.
He plays the melody with a subtle swing feel against the
solid downbeat of an alternating bass. Once the melody is
established, Baker begins spinning variations of the melody
based on different chord forms while keeping the steady
bass in motion, much like a pianist or a horn player
improvising over a rhythm section.
“I’ve never understood why more guitar players don’t
do that,” Baker says. “When I met Pat Donohue, he had
exactly the same approach – play the melody and improvise
off the chords like a stride piano players does. Get the left
hand, or bass, locked in, and make up melodies and
variations with the right – it’s so much fun to do. I use
more of a folk approach to fingerpicking, which I think is
more appropriate for playing fingerstyle jazz guitar,
although it hasn’t been largely accepted by players in the
jazz world.”
In addition to saxophonist Benny Golson’s “Out Of The
Past,” Baker also performs “Forty Ton Parachute” by
Scottish fingerpicker Davey Graham. Baker met Graham
in 1978 during a gig at a London club called The
Roundhouse. Baker and Graham were among the five guitar
players on the bill.