Mickey Baker

Among the guitarists who played a decisive role in shaping rhythm & blues into rock & roll, Mickey Baker ranked among the most influential, standing nearly alongside Chuck Berry and Bo Diddley. He never attained comparable fame because much of his playing appeared as uncredited session work behind assorted R&B and rock & roll performers instead of under his own name. Although his original goal was a career in jazz, he moved first into calypso and mambo before concentrating on R&B, the field that supplied the greatest volume of employment.

Throughout the early and middle 1950s he contributed to innumerable dates for Atlantic, King, RCA, Decca, and OKeh, appearing on such landmarks as the Drifters’ “Money Honey” and “Such a Night,” Joe Turner’s “Shake, Rattle & Roll,” Ruth Brown’s “Mama, He Treats Your Daughter Mean,” and Big Maybelle’s “Whole Lot of Shakin’ Going On.” He also cut a handful of singles credited to himself and issued the Latin jazz-inflected solo album Guitar Mambo.

Baker’s strongest recordings, however, were made as one half of the duo Mickey & Sylvia. Their hit “Love Is Strange,” together with several lesser-known yet comparably powerful tracks, showcased his keening, bluesy guitar riffs, which proved bolder and more penetrating than most contemporary playing in the late 1950s. Mickey & Sylvia disbanded in the late 1950s, though they continued to record together sporadically until the middle of the following decade. Baker subsequently released his finest solo effort, the all-instrumental The Wildest Guitar. In 1961 he supplied the male spoken vocal—commonly misattributed to Ike Turner—on Ike & Tina Turner’s first hit, “It’s Gonna Work Out Fine.” Shortly afterward he relocated to France, where he produced several elusive solo albums and worked with numerous French pop and rock artists, among them Ronnie Bird, the finest French rock singer of the 1960s. His own recording activity remained infrequent after the mid-1960s. Mickey Baker died at his home in Montastruc-la-Conseillère, France on November 27, 2012, at the age of 87.