Canterbury, England
Ginger Baker was out of cigarettes. Reclining in a thick brown leather easy chair in his living room, the drummer reached for a cellphone and called his fourth and current wife, bellowing for another pack. Dressed in blue-and-turquoise socks, jeans with the belt undone, and a white ribbed T-shirt, Mr. Baker sharply rebuffed a visitor's suggestion that he skip the smokes, saying he could do as he pleased. When the cigarettes arrived, Mr. Baker resumed chain smoking while answering questions about his health, his jazz roots and his legacy as the father of modern rock drumming.
"I'm in pain 24 hours a day—I have degenerative arthritis of the spine, and the painkillers only let me cope," said the 74-year-old Mr. Baker with a scowl as he watched English soccer on a muted flat-screen television. The night before, he had been in London performing with his band, Jazz Confusion—a quartet that starts a U.S. tour in New Hope, Penn., on Tuesday. "I love playing our music, but I hate the traveling. It's more difficult for me now."
One enters Mr. Baker's personal space with caution. He is notoriously curt—behavior aggravated by his joint pain and declining hearing after years performing in front of powerful speakers. Interview questions were met with a thundering "Whut?" while answers began with expletives, grunts or combative retorts. Riled in the 2012 documentary "Beware of Mr. Baker," Mr. Baker whacked the film's director on the nose with his cane.
Mr. Baker has always been impulsive. In 1966 he envisioned Cream—rock's first supergroup, with guitarist Eric Clapton and bassist Jack Bruce. During the trio's two-year run, Mr. Baker's expressive polyrhythmic playing elevated the drums to equal standing with the electric guitar and bass. In concert back then, Mr. Baker's flame-red hair, wide eyes and possessed expressions during lengthy, freewheeling solos made him an antihero for a generation of pencil-beating teens looking for hell-raising rock role models. Just don't ask if he was stoned.
"Oh for god's sake, I've never played rock," Mr. Baker snapped. "Cream was two jazz players and a blues guitarist playing improvised music. We never played the same thing two nights running. Jack and I had been in jazz bands for years. All that stuff I did on the drums in Cream didn't come from drugs, either—it was from me. It was jazz."
Unlike musicians who turn to jazz when their rock careers slow, Mr. Baker actually came up through London's jazz scene in the 1950s. He was first exposed to jazz drumming at age 14 after hearing "Quintet of the Year"—an all-star bebop album recorded live in 1953 at Toronto's Massey Hall. "I couldn't believe all the things Max Roach was doing on the drums—I was blown away." Years of beating his hands on school desks followed before Mr. Baker first sat behind a drum set at a party in 1956. "Friends forced me to go and play, and I was quite good. That's when I realized I was a drummer and would always be a drummer."
Mr. Baker's fist paid gig was with the Storyville Jazzmen in 1957—a band that played New Orleans-style jazz. "Trad jazz was virtually all that was happening in England at the time. Les Wood, the clarinetist, gave me a load of records by drummer Baby Dodds. They were quite a revelation. What I got is you play by listening to other musicians."
Mr. Baker toured Europe with several jazz ensembles, including one that backed gospel-R&B singer Sister Rosetta Tharpe. As Mr. Baker moved among London's modern jazz groups in 1959 and 1960, he met Phil Seamen—one of England's most innovative jazz drummers. "Phil told stories with his sticks and turned me on to recordings of African drummers. I got the African time straight away and Phil was impressed." But Seamen also introduced Mr. Baker to heroin, which would become an on-and-off addiction for the next 21 years.
In 1961 and '62, Mr. Baker continued playing jazz—including gigs with the Bert Courtley Sextet, where he first met Mr. Bruce. As the English economy improved in the early 1960s and a more youthful London emerged, many younger jazz players gravitated to big-beat blues and R&B bands, which offered more work and better pay.
One of those bands was Alexis Korner's Blues Incorporated. "Charlie Watts was the drummer and a big fan of mine. He gave up the drum chair for me in '62. Charlie told me he didn't want to be a musician, that there wasn't any security in it. Can you imagine? A short time later, Mick [Jagger] and Brian [Jones] said they were forming a band and needed a drummer. I recommended Charlie."
In 1964, Korner's alto saxophonist and organist Graham Bond left to form an R&B band—taking Messrs. Baker and Bruce with him and adding John McLaughlin. The Graham Bond Organization's "Oh Baby" in 1965 features one of Mr. Baker's earliest recorded drum solos. "The band was a whole new bag—funky and commercial," Mr. Baker said. "I was able to try different things."
When the Bond band began to disintegrate in 1966 as members squabbled, Mr. Baker said he decided to form his own band with Mr. Clapton. Mr. Bruce was their choice for bassist. For the next two years, Cream revolutionized rock with long, improvised solos and psychedelic imagery. "Crowds got larger, and Jack kept adding more Marshall amps. The louder sound damaged my hearing. By '68, I couldn't take it any more. The last year of Cream was very painful."
After Cream, Mr. Baker joined Blind Faith with Mr. Clapton, bassist Ric Grech and keyboard player Steve Winwood. When the group folded in 1969, Mr. Baker formed a jazz-rock fusion band and then moved to Nigeria in 1970, where he founded the first of several world-music ensembles. Mr. Baker also performed with jazz drummers Art Blakey and Elvin Jones. "They were drum battles that turned into duets. They became my friends and accepted me as playing at the same level as them."
Last year, after living in South Africa, Mr. Baker returned to live in England with his wife and her teenage daughter. What does Mr. Baker think of Cream fans and critics who consider him a rock drummer? "I don't give a damn what people think—I move forward," he said. "When people put drummers like John Bonham, Mitch Mitchell and Keith Moon in the same bag as me, it's really insulting. I have a gift, and none of them is even on the same street as me. The fact that I can still play is a miracle, isn't it?"
Mr. Myers writes daily about music at JazzWax.com.
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