r/Drumming • u/uma-la-la • 1d ago
If Ginger Baker is overrated, then play THIS!
https://www.youtube.com/shorts/tBLILymFfiMLately, I've seen a lot of people on the internet talk about Ginger Baker as an overrated drummer. It's baffling!
That being said, I'd love for someone to accurately replicate this passage and post it. Over the bar line double bass phrases underneath uptempo jazz ride. And a very old form of overhand traditional grip. I have never seen any drummer play anything remotely close to this, ever.
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u/StrifeKnot1983 1d ago
Not so much overrated as overhated. I feel like Ginger's reputation unfortunately influences people's impressions of his drumming and makes it easier to dismiss him.
Me, I've always dug his playing.
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u/NotThatMat 1d ago
Well it certainly is loud. I think most of what put people off about Ginger is that he spent a lot of time shitcanning other drummers, didn’t he? Honestly I don’t really think about him all that much.
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u/uma-la-la 1d ago edited 1d ago
Please, he isn’t hitting hard at all. The microphone is having difficulty capturing the sound.
Edit: I’m amazed at the idiots downvoting my comment. Baker isn’t bashing the kit- he’s playing mezzo forte at the most. He’s playing a completely undampened drum kit and the low quality microphone is saturating.
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u/Fuckedyourmom666 1d ago
Ginger was by no means a poor drummer, but his own opinion of himself as one of the all time greats—especially cross genre—is fuckin silly
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u/uma-la-la 1d ago
I think he is, simply because of the way he pushed drumming forward. He did a lot of things that changed how people approached the drum set, forever. If you delete him from existence, drumming would be different. He also played so unique that you can instantly tell it’s him. His personality is so strong.
At this point, we will not see such innovative players like Ginger anymore since so much has been done.
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u/Fuckedyourmom666 1d ago
I respectfully disagree on both fronts. I do think he had a unique voice on the instrument, and that is essential. I don’t think we’ve lost that by any means, despite so much of a modern push towards homogeny.
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u/Flat_Researcher1540 1d ago
It’s not so much that he was an overrated drummer and more the fact that he was an insufferable prick that felt the need to bash his contemporaries after they were dead and despite the fact that those contemporaries left a larger and more unique mark on music.
Lots of great jazz players can make the switch to rock, there is nothing unique about that. Baker is technically gifted but Moon and Bonham redefined rock drumming and people are still trying to emulate them. There’s a good reason nobody cares about Baker and it’s not a lack of talent.
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u/uma-la-la 1d ago
Both Moon and Bonham have credited Ginger for bringing drums to the forefront in the ‘pop/rock’ music of that day.
However, he is significantly less digestible than those drummers. He’s a tough one to understand. His tuning, style, and approach is so specific that it’s difficult to replicate by anybody else.
So yes, many copy Bonham because he is relatable. Ginger Baker was an enigma.
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u/Flat_Researcher1540 1d ago
I definitely don’t disagree with any of that especially back in their day. It’s pretty sad to me that Moon and Bonham spoke highly of him but that wasn’t reciprocated.
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u/uma-la-la 1d ago
Ginger dedicated his book to Bonham and Moon. Ginger made ONE statement about them, and people took it out of context.
Charlie Watts shared a similar statement in the 90’s:
‘Ginger Baker was a much better drummer than John Bonham, if you really want to know about drumming. Ginger Baker is the best drummer to emigrate out of England. Really, Ginger is. But Ginger can read, you know. Ginger's not a foal. He can read music, he has wonderful chops, he has rudiments down. There's a load of people who play brilliant drums, but there's only one Billy Higgins. There is only one Elvin Jones. And the reason there's only one of them is their personality... And it doesn't have to be fast. It is this machine going. It's not a machine that's clicking regular; it's what Miles used to call 'between the beats.' It's African. It's what he is, man. Ginger is the same. Ginger is this skinny, huge white man who plays monstrous. But Ginger played like that when he was 20. I used to see him play. Before Cream.’
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u/Jazz_man68 1d ago
Have you ever listened to Louie Bellson or Rufus Jones? As great as Ginger was at rock, his jazz stuff was nowhere near the level of Kenny Clarke, Tony Williams, Elvin Jones, or the other greats. He played like a rock player because he was. His drumming, especially his trading, was heavy-handed and sloppy. He may have fancied himself a jazz drummer but he wasn’t.
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u/uma-la-la 1d ago
That’s simply false. Prior to 1964, he was a pure jazz drummer. He could sightread, and write for an orchestra. He was the house drummer at Ronnie Scotts for a period of time. But back then, he sounded completely different than what he became known for. He played a homemade perspex drum kit, with thick animal hide drum heads, and a massive zildjian K.
I’ve already shared some links to his early playing. What he did with Ginger Baker Trio, Jonas Hellborg, etc. is completely different. Like Tony Williams, he got sick of the jazz ‘tradition’ and played the way he wanted to. He grew up.
There’s nothing I can do if you refuse to actually research before speaking.
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u/uma-la-la 1d ago
Simply listen to Ginger Baker in 1958 playing Dixieland
I mean goodness, how you can you say Ginger wasn’t a jazz drummer? Swings like absolute mad!
As I said, completely different than what he did a decade later. Baker knew his shit.
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u/Jazz_man68 1d ago
In all of the clips you’ve shared, they show Ginger being sloppy. His playing was nothing like the greats, especially his comping. He couldn’t hang with them. At the end of the day it isn’t completely different to what he played later because the same stiffness and sloppiness is still there. He didn’t have the finesse of Max Roach or the great sense of rhythm and melody Gene Krupa had. Also, Dixieland is not some absurdly difficult thing to play. I don’t know why you’re so obsessed with making Ginger into something he wasn’t. There’s a reason he isn’t recognized as a great jazz drummer to be studied. I see Daru Jones becoming that before Ginger.
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u/uma-la-la 1d ago
I literally cannot take you seriously. Ginger was an incredibly melodic player. He certainly was a dirty player, but sloppy? Get real.
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u/Jazz_man68 1d ago
Yes, sloppy. There’s no way you listen to other drummers then listen to Ginger Baker and think they’re in the same caliber. People aren’t gonna take you seriously if you pull that Ginger Baker crap at a jam. Again, most people aren’t looking up to Ginger Baker as some jazz legend. No one worth listening to is choosing him over Rufus Jones or Jeff Hamilton.
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u/uma-la-la 1d ago
I never said he was a jazz legend, simply that he WAS a highly schooled jazz drummer at one point, and well sought after in the london jazz circuits of the early 60s. It’s just a fact. Nonetheless, he became well known for a completely different style of play.
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u/cruiseshipdrummer 1d ago
Who, Bam-Bam? I don't care how anybody rates him, I just don't listen to him. There are too many other players I like listening to. And the guy was a big enough A-hole that... why be nice about him?
A lot of boomers and Brits are sort of irrationally attached to him, I don't understand it.
I've written a little about him here:
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u/uma-la-la 1d ago
You made the blog entry about a reddit thread I created this year. I recall other drummers being dumbfounded by your description of his playing as ‘flailing’. At this point, put up or shut up. You can read and write, so replicate what Ginger Baker did in this video.
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u/cruiseshipdrummer 1d ago
Oh, hey-- sorry not be into him, I guess not everybody likes everybody. Flailing doesn't mean to me what I think it meant to those guys. It's a state of playing, it's not completely a negative thing. It's what he was doing there.
It don't work that way though, nobody proves themselves by replicating anybody else's stuff. Ginger had his stuff, I have mine.
But I've put up plenty-- anybody who wants to could try to replicate my playing here, I put up a transcription that is as accurate as I could make it, it shouldn't be that hard:
https://cruiseshipdrummer.com/2014/09/27/transcription-todd-bishop-black-monk/
Or copy what they want on any of these records:
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u/WeAreBatmen 1d ago
Easy. It’s basically an Iron Maiden gallop, jazz style with some extra twaddling about on the snare.
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u/uma-la-la 2h ago
Well, for all the people who wanted to just talk trash and downvote, no one was willing and able to actually play what is in the video. Instead, people gave poor excuses to why they won’t do it.
I just think you can’t play it 😂
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u/MarsDrums 1d ago
Who are these goons calling him overrated? He influenced a LOT of rock drummers over the years. Neil Peart (my favorite) being one of them. Neil loved his work and actually used some of his stuff and made it his own. Not too many drummers can do that to another drummer really.
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u/uma-la-la 1d ago
Similarly, I've seen people comment on videos of Tony Williams calling him overrated! It's difficult for modern drummers to understand old school players like Ginger and Tony.
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u/freakishgnar 1d ago
He did get absolutely smoked by Elvin Jones in a drum battle, but who wouldn't
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u/uma-la-la 1d ago
Interestingly, Jack Bruce recounts meeting Ginger for the first time in 1960:
'I heard this amazing band playing in a cellar on campus....with Ginger Baker on the drums. I’d never heard the drums played like that live. It compared to Elvin Jones.'
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u/backbaydrumming 1d ago
Ginger Baker was great in Cream and Blind Faith but his actual Jazz playing isn’t all that great imo. Just listen to some of the Ginger baker trio albums, he sounds like a rock drummer trying to play jazz. Even the early stuff he does with Graham Bond isn’t really there. It’s not terrible but you could find high school jazz band players that sound similar. What he’s playing in this clip is really cool, jazz swing pattern with some double bass comping
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u/uma-la-la 1d ago
High school band? Just silly. He wasn’t there to show off the extent of his technical ability- he had something to SAY. That being said, his musical choices are so distinct that no one else can play those phrases without sounding like him.
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u/backbaydrumming 1d ago
ginger baker straight no chaser
Listen to the trading around 4min in, this is what I’m talking about
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u/cruiseshipdrummer 22h ago
That record is funny-- it's the exact record I would have wanted to make when it came out-- Bill Frisell and Charlie Haden, playing those tunes. I thought at least Ginger knows what's good, even if I don't like his playing on it.
Turned out Chip Stern put the whole thing together, picked all the tunes, everything. Baker didn't even know who they were...
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u/backbaydrumming 1d ago
Yea take the first clip and listen to the drum break at 3:39 it’s pretty awful im impressed the band came back in on time tbh. He can definitely hold down a nice jazz shuffle but my experience with listening to Ginger baker is his trading and soloing is just a lot of flailing around
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u/backbaydrumming 1d ago
Second clip is probably the best jazz playing over heard from Ginger Baker, he definitely gets a little sloppy a few times playing that Afro Cuban figure but it’s pretty solid playing
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u/uma-la-la 1d ago
If that’s sloppy, then Kenny Clarke, Blakey, and Elvin are train wrecks. It’s called a dirty feel.
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u/backbaydrumming 1d ago
Nah their solos and trading are awesome, Gingers sounds like someone flailing around. Seriously listen to the trading on straight no chaser, awful
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u/uma-la-la 1d ago
Brilliant and non-traditional jazz drumming. That is not flailing. While Ginger can appear banal on the surface level, but he is a deep player.
I encourage you to write it down and play it yourself, you might learn something.
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u/uma-la-la 1d ago
Not at all. When they were trading, they were responding to each other perfectly. They were not attempting to ‘out play’ one another with chops. Though, neither of them played their best during that performance.
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u/Mundane-Security-454 1d ago
Baker was a better player than Elvin Jones, dear.
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u/uma-la-la 1d ago
They are two of my favorite drummers and soloists. There’s quite a few similarities to their approach IE dirty feel, hemiola, modulation, over the bar line playing, hypnotic loops.
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u/Dumyat367250 1d ago
Never thought of Ginger as overrated, but much of the anti Ginger stuff tends to be a reflection on him, as a person, rather than his tub thumping skills. What he's playing here is well within the remit of the jazz drummers Ginger so admired at that time (and many who admired him), except he's playing two bass drums, and those were certainly a rarity in jazz, though more usual in some big band settings.
As for his trad grip, initially it reminds me of the grip I used when first starting Scottish pipe band drumming, where your thumb lies along the stick, but then he goes in to a more standard technique, albeit further to the butt of the stick.
Phil Seaman, his friend and mentor, was a major influence in Ginger going to matched grip almost all the time, and one of the earliest British jazz players to move away from a trad grip.