How to play drums like Ginger Baker
For someone who was so insistent that he wasn’t a rock drummer, Ginger Baker certainly had a massive impact on the evolution of the genre. The legendary drummer behind Cream, Blind Faith, and his own band, Ginger Baker’s Air Force, had a style that made him impossible to ignore. He also had a personality that was as aggressive and combative as his playing, with the two becoming inextricably linked throughout the years.
For Baker, his drumming always came back to jazz. Whether it was the creative boundary-pushing style of John Coltrane stickman Elvin Jones or the lead-focused approach of Max Roach, Baker’s foundations were firmly rooted in the music of jazz and swing. After taking a few lessons from British drummer Phil Seamen, Baker became his own teacher, pouring over jazz records as the blues explosion took off around him in London.
Although he favoured a spontaneous and powerful approach to the drums, Baker often warmed up with simple rudiments that were closer to military-style marches. Since his heroes were jazz players, Baker originally alternated between traditional grip and match grip, eventually becoming a full-time devotee to match grip when the rock boom took off. Flams, drum rolls, triplets, and paradiddles all factored heavily into his drumming style, so much so that basic beats were often discarded or turned around just so that Baker could keep himself interested in songs.
The main drum pattern for Cream’s ‘Sunshine of Your Love’, for example, places the rhythmic emphasis on beats one and three, rather than the traditional backbeat of two and four. His triplet fills across the tom-toms are also evident in songs like ‘Strange Brew’ and ‘Tales of Brave Ulysses’. Baker was one of the first drummers to utilise an expanded set-up for his drums, adding a number of additional toms, cymbals, and, most famously, a set of double bass drums to his kit. Once again, Baker’s innovation could be traced back to jazz.
“Every drummer that ever played for Duke Ellington played a double bass drum kit,” Baker told Jazzwise in 2010. “I went to a Duke Ellington concert in 1966 and Sam Woodyard was playing with Duke and he played some incredible tom-tom and two bass drum things, some of which I still use today and I just knew I had to get a two bass drum kit. Keith Moon was with me at that concert and we were discussing it and he went straight round to Premier and bought two kits which he stuck together. I had to wait for Ludwig to make a kit up for me, which they did—to my own specifications. So Moonie had the two bass drum kit some months before I did.”
Although the pair were friendly, Baker often detested being compared to Moon. The pair shared a flamboyant and forceful approach to the drums, but whereas Moon could often fly off the handle, Baker kept his rhythms compact and laser-focused. Speed was a secondary concern for Baker: songs like Cream’s ‘Dreaming’ and Blind Faith’s ‘Can’t Find My Way Home’ saw Baker pull from doo-wop and folk influences, with both tracks featuring the drummer playing brushes instead of traditional drumsticks.
Baker’s versatility fit into his own view of himself as a composer of the drums rather than simply a drummer. No song exemplifies this quite like ‘Toad’, his drum solo from 1966’s Fresh Cream that later became expanded in the live setting. The song allowed Baker to show off his prowess and knowledge that made him stand apart from his contemporaries, with passages often containing various rhythmic ideas and solid structures that turned the solo into a full-fledged composition. With his left foot more-or-less keeping a consistent rhythm on the hi-hat, Baker would use his other three limbs in various combinations, often branching out into the swinging jazz rhythms that he preferred.
Baker was a Ludwig user on most of his most famous recordings, but in his later years, he had custom drum kits made by Drum Workshop. His bass drums were often two different sizes and tuned to replicate the resonant sounds of timpanis rather than the typical dull thud of a bass drum. Baker’s cymbals also showed off his preferences for resonating tones: his rides cymbals often included rivets that would continue to ring after he hit them. For most of his life, Baker used the same 14-inch hi-hats, dating back to his days in Cream. For snare drums, Baker preferred 13-14 inch wood snares tuned high.
As he evolved as a musician, Baker continued to take in different influences from across music, notably infusing afrobeat rhythms into his style after befriending Fela Kuti in the 1970s. His frequent trips to Africa solidified his dedication to non-traditional rhythms, the likes of which continued to filter into his solos. By the end of the 1970s, Baker’s style had the attack of rock, the techniques of jazz, and the creativity of African rhythms all working together.
Baker’s playing style might have been intuitive, improvisational, and assertive, but it was his dedication to dynamics, atypical rhythms, and different tones that truly made him stand out. By taking a jazz-focused approach to rock music, Baker opened up the possibilities of what drummers could do in any style of music. More than anything else, it was his desire to make his parts melodic and memorable that made Baker unique. While other drummers were playing as fast and loud as possible, Ginger Baker was creating mini-symphonies, no matter what (or who) he had to bludgeon in order to get there.
