Mickey Baker

Genres:	Blues • Pop / Rock
Descriptive "tags":	blues • under 2000 listeners • electric blues • rhythm & blues
Decades Active:	1950s • 1960s • 1970s • 1990s • 2000s

Biography

McHouston Baker, 15 October 1925, Louisville, Kentucky, USA. After spells in reform school and a children’s home, Baker moved to New York in 1941. He lived on the fringes of the criminal world but took up the guitar and quickly became a virtuoso, equally adept at jazz and blues styles. From the late 40s, Mickey ‘Guitar’ Baker played on hundreds of recording sessions, accompanying such artists as Ray Charles, the Coasters, Ivory Joe Hunter, Ruth Brown and Screaming Jay Hawkins. Baker occasionally recorded under his own name and in 1956 teamed up with guitarist/vocalist Sylvia Vanderpool. After an unsuccessful version of ‘Walking In The Rain’, the atmospheric ‘Love Is Strange’ (co-written by Bo Diddley) by Mickey And Sylvia was a US Top 20 hit on Groove in 1956. Later singles on Vik and RCA Records were only minor hits, although the duo contributed to Ike And Tina Turner’s ‘It’s Gonna Work Out Fine’ (1961), where...

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