|
|
|
|
|
||
|
|
|
|
|
|
||
" Memphis musician remembered for show that left them wanting more. "
|
By Norm Shaw
It was another time and almost another place, but one thing never changed: Lee Baker's ability to stop an audience in its tracks and make them listen. It happened in 1969 at the Overton Park Shell. It is a memory Larry Changes has always cherished. Now, with the death of Baker, it's one of the few things Changes has left. Baker was killed Tuesday, Sept. 10, along with his aunt, Sally McKay. They were at McKay's home in Horshoe Lake, Ark. They were shot and the home was burned. The investigation continues. Baker, 52, led the blues-rock band Moloch in the late 1960s, making one record for a Stax subsidiary in 1970. He went to help form Mudboy & the Neutrons with friends Jim Dickinson, Sid Selvidge and Jimmy Crosthwait. In the '90s, Baker became a Beale Street regular with Lee Baker and the Agitators. His long career included stints with Charlie Rich, but his true love was acoustic blues. And he played with many of the greats, including Mississippi Fred McDowell, Sleepy John Estes, Bukka White, Gus Cannon and Furry Lewis. It was with Lewis that Baker forged his deepest relationship. But it is with Moloch that Changes remembers Baker. And it is Changes who is telling us this story. I'm sitting at my kitchen table in the small hours of the morning, a glass of gin at my right. Yesterday, I'm told, Lee Baker was murdered in his prime. He was my mentor. My "brother." My best of buddies. Well, Lee knew all about gin, you understand. As he once stated on the Moloch LP, "We want you to get down with us this mornin'...If you can't stand the heat, stay outta the kitchen." I got to know brother Lee in that little combo, the Moloch. I won't divulge the name to protect the "innocent" (and of course we know by now there are no innocent), but their bass player's mother didn't want her son playing with a pack of wolves like that Moloch bunch. Lee asked me to step in and join the ranks, and after hearing Lee's playing and Philip Dale's drumming, I did just as Lee asked as fast as one can say "Goin' Down." All this was circa 1969. Fast forward to the Overton Park Shell, second annual Blues Fest, and the burn of Johnny Winter by Lee Baker and the Moloch. Don't get me wrong; Johnny Winter was hot that day. Hot as a mosquito's stinger. He just happened to sting the wrong guy. It's funny how things work out. Moloch was trying to get out of that "burn the other band's ass" thing. After all, it was the summer of '69 - brotherly love and motherly drug daze (or days). And we thought that competitive attitude a tough unprofessional. But sometimes a situation comes down on you like heat on a cat's ass. As I said, Johnny was hot that day. Hot enough to get two thundering encores. We had to follow that. We had to close the show. But lo and behold, when Winter finished his set, the place started to empty. The shell was emptying as fast as Winter's equipment leaving the stage. Lee growled, "What gives?" A frustrated roadie mused, "Well, probably not everybody knows you guys are playing." Lee just whispered, "Hook me up first." Lee walked on stage, plugged in and commenced to play some of the nastiest blues licks, dug up from his years with Furry and Bukka, and guess what? That whole mother-humpin' joint filled totally back up to capacity, at which point we were set up behind him. We kicked into the raunchiest, funky-ass version of "Mean Town Blues" ever to survive the heat of the moment. By the time we had escorted the crowd through a purging "Phil's Blues," we had accumulated three encores, and Johnny Winter's eyes were just a touch more crossed. Having heard the mastery of Lee Baker, I can only sigh at our loss. Lee is my heart-felt bad-boy good-man. The last few years, he didn't mellow, he just glowed deeper. At the Harley rally a couple of weeks back, Lee played and sang "come on in, and I'll play you some of those down-home blues." No happy-go-lucky blues here. Just the original invitation by the spider to the fly. And this was the most beautiful, rain-kissed web I've ever been caught in. When his house burned down three weeks prior to his death, he told me with so much optimism, "I thank God no one I love got hurt." Yes, he did say that when the Good Lord closes a door, down the road He opens another. But then again, Lee could wink inside you and whisper, to remember, when we gotta to, it's a done deal.
|
