Live With Ginger Baker (1971)
Artist
Label
Catalogue number
KFR2003-1
Release date
- Vinyl
- CD
- WAV / FLAC
- MP3
Another high altitude Afrobeat test flight. Do not unfasten your seat belt, please, until 1992’s Underground System has landed. Fela and Ginger Baker first met in London in the early 1960s. At the time, Fela was studying at Trinity College of Music by day and discovering weed and leading Fela Ransome-Kuti and His Highlife Rakers by night. “Fela used to come to sit in at the [jazz] all-nighters in the Flamingo,” said Baker in 2012. “He was playing trumpet then and he was good.” Later in 1971, Baker would relocate to Lagos, where he was based until 1975, building a studio in which many of Fela's albums of that era were recorded and spending much of his time hanging with Fela and sitting in with Africa 70. “The people loved seeing an Englishman in the band,” said Baker, whose girlfriend was one half of Lagos’ drop-dead gorgeous vocal-group the Lijadu Sisters (now living in New York). “They couldn’t believe it at first. It was quite a thing.” Originally released by Regal Zonophone.
Standard black vinyl LP, released in 2010 as part of the Knitting Factory Records re-issues, comes with a download card.
