Peter Edward "Ginger" Baker 75 today

I was watching an appearance recently by Ginger Baker on a TV news program. He was getting quite impatient and not a little tetchy with the interviewer and it came to a head when the hapless BBC hack referred to Cream as "Eric Clapton's band".

"It was MY band" snarled Mr. Baker.

.

He has been one of, if not the, major influences on my drumming. His understanding of musical time is simply incredible.

If I'm not mistaken, 'Disraeli Gears' was the No. 1 album of 1968, although that was the year I was totally immersed in the 'The Doors' by a little known band by the same name. lol I spent that year in Vietnam and we were forbidden from listening to The Doors. I still remember the day I went to the PX and bought my Akai M-9, reel-to-reel tape recorder and the best headphones money could buy at the time, all in anticipation of my first shipment of tapes from Columbia House.

When that box arrived I smoked myself into oblivion, had a nice monkey-meat sandwich with an ice-cold Coca Cola and then crashed on my cot with the music playing so loud in my earphones that I got a bloody nose.

They are not kidding when they say that, "they don't make music like that, anymore." No truer words have ever been spoken. :-)

Cheers. - Frank

Depends who you listen to I guess. From what I have heard Ginger did approach Eric first. One of my favorite Baker lines is when he was told about Cream giving birth to heavy metal, Gingers reply? "We should of had an abortion."
Learning time was the number one priority of my first drum instructor. My first lesson at the age of 10 was, RLRL, counting out loud 1,2,3,4, in time to a metronome. I had to practice that 1/2 hour a day then switch to LRLR for a half hour, I also did another half hour of RLRL LRLR.
I learned all the rudiments like that.
My second instructor was into jazz and swing (AKA big band). Probably the most important things I learned from him was in being able to apply the rudiments in a musical setting and learning odd times like 5/4 (think mission impossible theme song).
But Ginger Baker took time to a whole different level.
The best I can explain it is in normal time you count 1,2,3,4 (which is a simple 4/4 time) and both your hands and both your feet work off of that time.
With Ginger time, each hand and foot operates in it's own time so that 4/4 becomes 5/8 for your right foot, stays 4/4 for the left, 7/8 for the right hand and 2/4 for the left. As he puts it, you have to divide your brain into four parts with each part controlling a different foot or hand.