Listen to Ginger Baker’s isolated drums on Cream song ‘Disraeli Gears’
In heated “best drummer of all time” debates, several names seem to circulate as eminent experts. In the realm of jazz, it’s all about Biddy Rich and Art Blakey, but in rock ‘n’ roll, we tend to return to the psychedelic and prog rock eras where the holy trinity of British drumming talent reside: Mitch Mitchell of The Jimi Hendrix Experience, John Bonham of Led Zeppelin, and Ginger Baker of Cream.
These three extraordinarily gifted beat-keepers performed alongside the instrumental virtuosity of Jimi Hendrix, Eric Clapton and Jimi Page and yet still emerge as salient presences in their own right.
While appearing as guests on Amazon’s motoring show, The Grand Tour, in 2018, two legendary drummers, Stewart Copeland of The Police and Pink Floyd’s Nick Mason, agreed that Mitchell was the best of all time.
“Well, that’s the travesty right there,” Copeland interjected when the host, Jeremy Clarkson, explained to the audience who Mitchell was. “This great towering… this monument of drums, was Jimi Hendrix’s drummer!”
“Well, how would you describe him?” a perplexed Clarkson asked. “Well, Jimi was Mitch’s guitarist,” Copeland asserted.
By Copeland and Mason’s assessment, Mitchell was just a hair’s breadth above Ginger Baker in the drumming “hierarchy” they had devised over a meal the night before the show. In his 2022 interview with Far Out, Copeland discussed his drumming influences and namechecked the holy trinity.
“It was all Ginger Baker and Mitch Mitchell then, and Bonham came later,” Copeland mused. “I liked the fact that Ginger used his tom-toms a lot. He was playing more of his drums than the others, as was Mitch Mitchell, who was probably the most inspiring out of all of them.”
As Copeland notes, these three late drummers are revered to this day because they were each innovative in their own way, bringing a distinctive personality to the skins. Mitchell and Baker, especially, used syncopation and ride cymbal patterns characteristic of bebop and other advanced forms of jazz, with the latter incorporating African rhythms into proceedings.
In his memoir, Hellraiser: The Autobiography of the World’s Greatest Drummer, Baker recalled that Bonham felt they shared a position on the drumming hierarchy, neglecting to acknowledge Mitchell. However, as the humble title of Baker’s autobiography suggests, he wasn’t ready to equate to anyone, let alone regard them as superior.
“John Bonham once made a statement that there were only two drummers in British rock ‘n’ roll: himself and Ginger Baker,” Baker noted. “My reaction to this was: ‘You cheeky little bastard!'”
Listen below to Ginger Baker’s virtuosic drumming on Cream’s 1966 masterpiece album, Disraeli Gears. You can hear the master at work in isolated glory through memorable hits like ‘Sunshine of Your Love’, ‘Strange Brew’ and ‘Outside Woman Blues’.
