The Squid's Ear Magazine

Baker, Duck

Breakdown Lane: Free Solos & Duos 1976-1998

Baker, Duck: Breakdown Lane: Free Solos & Duos 1976-1998 (ESP)

A collection of fourteen solo guitar pieces and two duos with Eugene Chadbourne, this album features works by Billy Strayhorn and Duke Ellington (Take the 'A' Train), Thelonious Monk (Straight, No Chaser), and Ornette Coleman (Peace), drawn from live performances and demo sessions recorded between 1976 and 1998, showcasing Baker's impressive range, unique fingerstyle, and mastery of diverse moods and styles.
 

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product information:

Personnel:



Duck Baker-guitar

Eugene Chadbourne-guitar


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UPC: 825481510028

Label: ESP
Catalog ID: ESPDISK 5100CD
Squidco Product Code: 35357

Format: CD
Condition: New
Released: 2024
Country: USA
Packaging: Cardboard Gatefold
Recorded by Dix Bruce and Lesli Dalaba.

Descriptions, Reviews, &c.

"Duck Baker Should Be a National Treasure. He Should Be an International Treasure.

Should be? In my book he already is. I first came across his work in the 1970s on early Kicking Mule LPs in my local library in the UK, which was his temporary base then, and is his permanent home now. Many years later I was astounded by Spinning Song, his CD of Herbie Nichols compositions. Around the same time, I made contact with him by way of thanks following a review he wrote of my work on Stuff Smith and, later, other historic violinistic books and CDs. I say that by way of disclosure.

Duck's knowledge and learning about the ancestry of so many musical genres is prodigious, whether jazz, avant-garde, improvisation in general, various forms of country music, Irish, blues, ragtime, swing, you name it. He draws on so much to make his own unique playing and composing. And none of it is to go by the troublesome term "appropriation." Duck absorbs, pays tribute, and is himself, wherever his fingers might move across his flamenco guitar, including, of course, its wood body.

This previously unreleased collection consists of fourteen solos and two duos with Eugene Chadbourne. The performances are drawn mostly from demo sessions or live recordings, and were recorded at various locations between 1976 and 1998. They run the gamut of moods and tempos, from the reflective "Peace" and brooding "Like Flies" to burners that rank with Baker's most animated free playing on record, like the title track, "No Family Planning," and "Buffalo Fire." The only so-to-speak standards are Thelonious Monk's "Straight, No Chaser" and Billy Strayhorn's "Take the 'A' Train," the latter featuring fascinating and humorous interplay between the two guitarists.

Duck's fingerstyle playing is unmistakable, in whatever genre. No one else sounds like him. Of guitarists, Duck reveals that Sonny Sharrock was an early influence for his free jazz/free improv style, and Derek Bailey a somewhat later one. Technically, the soloing of bass players such as Charles Mingus was a greater influence. But his main influences have been horn players, among them Eric Dolphy, Archie Shepp, Ornette Coleman, Jimmy Lyons, and Albert Ayler, as well as the piano playing of Cecil Taylor, to the extent that it is possible to transfer their intensities to acoustic guitar. We might say that there is an intricate delicacy to Duck's intensity.

Duck's catalogue is now vast, including a recent CD release of Thelonious Monk compositions, which beautifully complements the aforementioned Nichols CD. As well as solo efforts, past records include collaborations with the likes of Chadbourne, Roswell Rudd, John Zorn, and John Butchers or, at the other end of the spectrum, Stefan Grossman, John Renbourn, Leo Kottke, Molly Andrews, and Maggie Boyle.

I, for one, never tire of listening to Duck playing in whatever context. He is a master and every recording is a gem."-Anthony Barnett


Artist Biographies

"Duck Baker is one of the most highly regarded fingerstyle guitarists of his generation. He is unique among jazz guitarists in that his repertoire spans the entire history of the music from ragtime through swing to modern masters like Thelonious Monk and Herbie Nichols to free improvisation. Baker's devotion to American music also encompasses more traditional forms like blues, gospel, and Appalachian music and its Scots-Irish ancestry. This catholicism has been likened to Europeans who perform the classical repertoire from renaissance through to modern music.

Duck was born Richard R. Baker IV in 1949 and grew up in Richmond, Virginia. He passed his teenage years playing in rock and blues bands before becoming interested in acoustic blues. Local ragtime pianist Buck Evans was a major influence on Baker's evolution. By the time he moved to San Francisco in the early seventies, he was performing the wide range of material heard on his first record for the Kicking Mule label, "There's Something for Everyone in America". In addition to developing his solo style, Baker joined a bluegrass band and immersed himself in the local swing jazz scene, forming a duo with guitarist Thom Keats and performing with such Bay Area luminaries as Burt Bales and Robin Hodes. Baker remains active in this music, leading a trio with guitarist Bob Wilson and fiddler Tony Marcus.

In the late seventies, Baker recorded four more records for Kicking Mule, including two devoted to jazz and the first solo guitar record of Irish and Scottish music. He also began touring as a soloist, traveling throughout North America, Western Europe, and Australia. He eventually moved to Europe where he was based for nine years before returning to San Francisco in 1987. It was also in the late seventies that Baker became associated with the free music scene, performing with musicians like Eugene Chadbourne and John Zorn in New York and Bruce Ackley and Henry Kaiser in San Francisco. His associations in the 90's included the highly regarded Irish fiddler, Kieran Fahy, and the great traditional singer, Molly Andrews. As of 2002 he is involved in several other duos: with trombone master Roswell Rudd, bassist Mark Dresser, and guitarists Jamie Findlay, Woody Mann and Ken Emerson. He also leads a trio which includes violinist Carla Kihlstedt and clarinetist Ben Goldberg.

Baker's solo recordings since 1980 have for the most part focused on his own compositions, which reflect the influence of the great jazz pianist/composers like Monk, Nichols, Randy Weston, etc. His pieces have been recorded by various other guitarists, as well as Irish and American traditionalists and modern jazzmen.His most ambitious record, "Spinning Song", which is devoted to the music of Herbie Nichols, got rave reviews in Jazz Times, Cadence, Coda, and the New York Times, and helped establish Baker as an important voice in the world of fingerstyle jazz guitar. Various critics named "Spinning Song" among the best jazz records of 1997 in Cadence and Coda magazines, and it placed high on the Cadence reader's poll of that year. Acoustic Guitar magazine dubbed it "one of the best guitar records ever recorded - by anybody." "

-Duck Baker Website (https://duckbaker.com/biography/)
12/11/2024

Have a better biography or biography source? Please Contact Us so that we can update this biography.

"A seemingly endless -- and endlessly eclectic -- series of releases made the innovative guitarist Eugene Chadbourne one of the underground community's most well-known and well-regarded eccentrics. Born January 4, 1954 in Mount Vernon, NY, Chadbourne was raised in Boulder, CO, by his mother, a refugee of the Nazi death camps. At the age of 11, the Beatles inspired him to learn guitar; later exposure to Jimi Hendrix prompted him to begin experimenting with distortion pedals and fuzzboxes. Ultimately, however, he became dissatisfied with the conventions of rock and pop, and traded in his electric guitar for an acoustic one, on which he began to learn to play bottleneck blues.

Perhaps Chadbourne's most significant formative discovery was jazz; initially drawn to John Coltrane and Roland Kirk, he later became an acolyte of the avant excursions of Derek Bailey and Anthony Braxton. Despite the huge influence music exerted over his life, however, Chadbourne first studied to become a journalist, but his career was derailed when he fled to Canada rather than fight in Vietnam; only President Jimmy Carter's declaration of amnesty for conscientious objectors allowed the vociferously left-wing Chadbourne to return to the U.S. in 1976, at which time he plunged headlong into the New York downtown music scene. After releasing his 1976 debut, Solo Acoustic Guitar, he began collaborating on purely improvisational music with the visionary saxophonist John Zorn and the acclaimed guitarist Henry Kaiser.

Quickly, Chadbourne carved out a singular style, comprised of equal parts protest music, free improvisation, and avant-garde jazz, topped off with his absurd, squeaky vocals. A complete list of Chadbourne's countless subsequent collaborations and genre workouts is far too lengthy and detailed to exhaustively document, although in the early '80s he garnered some of his first significant attention as the frontman of Shockabilly, a demented rockabilly revisionist outfit which also featured the well-known producer Kramer. Following the group's breakup, Chadbourne turned to his own idiosyncratic brand of country and folk, accurately dubbed LSD C&W on a 1987 release, the same year he joined the members of Camper Van Beethoven for a one-off covers project. In addition, he recorded with artists ranging from Fred Frith and Elliott Sharp to Evan Johns and Jimmy Carl Black, the original drummer in the Mothers of Invention; in between, he continued exploring unique styles inspired by music from the four corners of the globe, all the while issuing a seemingly innumerable string of records, most of them on his own Parachute label."

-All Music (http://www.allmusic.com/artist/eugene-chadbourne-mn0000172925/biography)
12/11/2024

Have a better biography or biography source? Please Contact Us so that we can update this biography.


Track Listing:



1. Allah, Perhaps 4:46

2. Peace 3:31

3. No Family Planning 1 2:17

4. Klee 3:50

5. Like Flies (Requiem for Bobby Fussell) 5:01

6. Breakdown Lane 2:24

7. Yewatta 1:16

8. Buffalo Fire 4:41

9. No Family Planning 2 3:07

10. Eusebia's Lament 5:08

11. 47 East Houston St. 4:29

12. 2:29 in Unleavenworth 2:28

13. Sonadem Sol 2:47

14. Breakdown Lane [Duo Version] 5:14

15. Take the `A' Train 3:27

16. Straight, No Chaser 4:00

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Improvised Music
Jazz
Jazz & Improvisation Based on Compositions
Free Improvisation
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Solo Artist Recordings
Duo Recordings
Chadbourne. Eugene
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