Album Notes

Duck Baker is one of the most highly regarded fingerstyle guitarists of his generation. He is unique among jazz guitarists in that his repertoire spans the entire history of the music from ragtime through swing to modern masters like Thelonious Monk and Herbie Nichols to free improvisation. Baker’s devotion to American music also encompasses more traditional forms like blues, gospel, and Appalachian music and its Scots-Irish ancestry.
Duck was born Richard R. Baker IV in 1949 and grew up in Richmond, Virginia. He passed his teenage years playing in rock and blues bands before becoming interested in acoustic blues. Local ragtime pianist Buck Evans was a major influence on Baker’s evolution. By the time he moved to San Francisco in the early seventies, he was performing the wide range of material heard on his first record for the Kicking Mule label, “There’s Something for Everyone in America”. In addition to developing his solo style, Baker formed a swing duo with guitarist Thom Keats and also performed with such Bay Area luminaries as Burt Bales and Robin Hodes. Baker remains active in this music, performing occasionally with a swing power trio that features Tony Marcus on fiddle and the legendary Bob Wilson on Selmer-style guitar.
In the late seventies, Baker recorded four more records for Kicking Mule, including two devoted to jazz. He also began touring as a soloist, traveling throughout North America, Western Europe, and Australia. It was also in the late seventies that Baker became associated with the free music scene, performing with musicians like Eugene Chadbourne and John Zorn in New York and Bruce Ackley and Henry Kaiser in San Francisco. More recant associations include duos with trombone master Roswell Rudd, bassist Mark Dresser, and guitarist Jamie Findlay. He has also lead a trio with violinist Carla Kihlstadt and clarinetist Ben Goldberg in the San Francisco area, and since transferring to London in 2005 has started another, with clarinetist Alex Ward and bassist Joe Williamson.
Baker’s solo recordings since 1980 have for the most part focused on his own compositions, which reflect the influence of great jazz pianist/composers like Monk, Nichols, Randy Weston, etc. His pieces have been recorded by various other guitarists, as well as Irish and American traditionalists and modern jazzmen. His most ambitious record, “Spinning Song”, which is devoted to the music of Herbie Nichols, got rave reviews in Jazz Times, Cadence, Coda, and the New York Times, and helped establish Baker as an important voice in the world of fingerstyle jazz guitar. Various critics named “Spinning Song” among the best jazz records of 1997 in Cadence and Coda magazines, and it placed high on the Cadence reader’s poll of that year. Acoustic Guitar magazine dubbed it “one of the best guitar records ever recorded - by anybody.”

On his newest CD, “Do You Know What It Means To Miss New Orleans,” Baker returns to the joyous sounds of ragtime, classic jazz and swing. Even with older material he finds new approaches, whether it’s a solo guitar arrangement of a classic piano rag or big-band swing standard, or red hot duo tracks with the fine Bay Area jazz guitarist Will Bernard and Hawaiian steel guitar/ukulele master Ken Emerson.


"Quite simply, Duck Baker is the premier American fingerstyle guitarist." – Sing Out

"He can go from the Mississippi Delta to the rings of Saturn" – The Village Voice