Bill Frisell on Working With the Late Ginger Baker: 'It Was Total Generosity'

If you take a deep dive into the late Ginger Baker's discography, one of his most fruitful yet overlooked periods is the four-year scope of his mid-90s jazz trio with bassist Charlie Haden and guitarist Bill Frisell. The Ginger Baker Trio produced two albums for Atlantic in 1994's Going Back Home and 1996's Falling Off The Roof, released in parallel to the drummer's fervent return to heavy guitar rock with a brief stint with stoner rock pioneers Masters of Reality and the short-lived BBM trio. For Frisell, an avowed Cream fan, his time playing in Baker's jazz group was a largely pleasant experience that didn't entail any of the wild man antics that made him a rock legend for all the wrong reasons. But he admits to being quite intimidated upon formally meeting him for the first time as they began work on Going Back Home.

"When I went to do the first album, I don't think he knew who I was or anything," Frissell tells Billboard. "It was like a setup: Chip Stern, who produced the record, he knew Ginger for a long, long time, and he knew me, and he knew Charlie. So, he had a vision of what it would be like to hear us playing together. Somehow, he convinced the record company to go for it.

So, for Ginger, he knew Charlie, but I don't think he knew who I was at all. I go into the studio and I'm like, 'Oh God, what am I gonna do?' I never met him before formally and I was super nervous. I go into the studio and he's setting up his drums and smoking cigarettes, cigarette butts are all over the place, and he's mumbling to himself. I go up to him like, 'Excuse me, Ginger, I'm the guitar player.' And he said to me, 'Hi, how ya doin'?' He wasn't hugging me hello or anything (laughs).

But then, I swear to God, the first tune we start playing all together it just kicked in almost immediately and he just started smiling. There was so much joy in him feeling the three of us just playing in a room together. And it felt so true and so real. He was super generous with how we could play and what tunes we wanted to play whether it was one of mine or one of Charlie's or his own. It was just three guys getting together to play, and that really showed me where he was at. It was strictly about the music for him. It's what got him going."

"Falling Off The Roof was a more difficult birth," he admits to Billboard. "The album was called Falling Off The Roof because right before we went into the studio, Ginger was working up on the roof of his house and fell and broke a bone. So, he was in a lot of pain throughout the sessions and he was taking a little bit too much pain medication or something, I can't remember. But it wasn't the ideal circumstance. The first one was a more effortless thing."

Nevertheless, working with Charlie Haden was equally bucket-list caliber for Frisell.

"I first heard Charlie around the same time I heard Ginger," recalled the guitarist. "Within months after seeing Cream live, I bought Keith Jarrett's album Somewhere Before, which were the first notes I heard from Charlie, as he played bass on the record with Paul Motian on drums, someone else who I'd go on to work alongside for many years. When I first met Paul, he would always talk about Charlie Haden. It was Charlie this and Charlie that. They were like brothers. And he would tell me about Charlie's triplet daughters and all this stuff. So, when I met Petra, which was sometime in the late '90s, I was living in Seattle and she came out here to play a gig. So, I went to see her, and it really felt like a mutual thing where we already knew each other. Pretty soon after that we made a duet record in 2003 and played out a lot."

A quarter century after recording that first Ginger Baker Trio album for Atlantic Records in 1994 with Charlie Haden, Frisell would find himself commemorating over 15 years of working with Petra on his latest album Harmony, a gorgeous collection of reimagined songs by Elvis Costello, Stephen Foster, Julie Miller, Pete Seeger and others balanced out by instrumental pieces for Petra's distinctive vocal phrasing and the cello work of longtime associate Hank Roberts. And, coincidentally, Harmony is his debut album on Blue Note Records -- a name synonymous with pillars of Mr. Baker's rhythmic DNA in Art Blakey, Max Roach and Elvin Jones.

"After I graduated high school, my parents moved from Colorado to New Jersey, and shortly thereafter I went to the Village Vanguard for the first time," the guitar player tells Billboard. "It was also when I got this record; it was a Blue Note compilation. It was their 30th anniversary in 1969, and they put out these three double albums. The one I got was from 1949 to 1959, so it had Sonny Rollins, Miles Davis, Sonny Clark, John Coltrane, Clifford Brown, Jimmy Smith and Kenny Burrell. There was Bud Powell on there. That was one of the first jazz albums I ever got, that Blue Note compilation. It was like a lifetime of information just on this one record."

As the world winds down its first week without Ginger Baker walking among us, Frisell can only look back with wonder at having had the opportunity to work with the cantankerous icon of AOR's propulsive rhythm.

"When I was in high school and there was all this music just coming at me and I was just dreaming that I could someday play the guitar, I went to see Cream in 1968," Frisell reflects. "Hearing Ginger for the first time back then, that sound was ingrained in my body somehow. It's so deep down in my DNA. And then if you had told me then that 25 years later, I'd get to play with not only him but Charlie Haden as well....it was incredible.

It was just total generosity with Ginger. We didn't at all experience whatever stuff sometimes that people would talk about concerning his rough exterior. It wasn't like he was telling us what to do at all. He just let us play, and I felt like I could do anything I wanted within the frame of these compositions. He definitely seemed happy when he was playing with us."

CREDITS: Ron Hart / Billboard Magazine

Steve Miller Says, ‘Welcome To The Vault’ With Expansive New Box Set

Steve Miller gives you the key to his personal archives.

Welcome To The Vault is a Career-spanning 3 CD + DVD Collection containing 52 audio tracks and 21 performances on DVD!

With 38 previously unreleased recordings, including 5 compositions that have never been heard before, and featuring alternate versions of classic songs, live performances and more, all housed in a 100-page hardbound book of Steve's personal photos, with a 9,000-word essay by David Fricke.

The DVD contains 21 live performances including rare footage from the 1967 Monterey Pop Festival, Don Kirshner's Rock Concert in 1973, ABC In Concert 1974, a 1970 concert from the Fillmore West filmed for Dutch TV, Pine Knob Michigan in 1982, Steve and Les Paul at Fat Tuesdays (1990) and Austin City Limits in 2011.

Plus, the deluxe set includes 10 Guitar picks with Steve's Pegasus logo, and an authentic backstage pass from the Steve Miller vault.

A lot can change in 40 years, but some things not so much. Thank you for being a Steve Miller Band fan! Enjoy the treasures of Welcome To The Vault!

Order Welcome To The Vault and listen to all the tracks here: https://stevemillerband.lnk.to/WelcomeToTheVault

DOLLY PARTON CELEBRATES 50 YEARS AS GRAND OLE OPRY MEMBER

Dolly Parton has added another milestone to her already legendary career as she celebrates 50 years as a member of the prestigious Grand Ole Opry.

Parton marked this accomplishment on Oct. 12 with two sold-out performances at the Opry. Before playing her two sets at the revered country music institution, fellow country music artists Lady Antebellum, Toby Keith and Candi Carpenter took to the stage to honor the "I Will Always Love You" singer by performing some of her songs.

Parton then took the time to reflect on her decades-long membership into the Grand Ole Opry, telling Billboard, "The night that I actually became a member 50 years ago was one of the highlights of my whole life because it was a true dream of mine… You never know what's going to happen to you in your life. You never know if your dreams will come true. And if they do, you wonder how people will remember you when you're older."

The Grammy-winning singer then continued by saying, "I'm older and I'm seeing how people remember me and that makes me feel very humble and I'm just very honored that I'm still around."

The singer then took to the stage to perform many of her classic songs, including "Jolene," "9 to 5" and "Here You Come Again," among others. Parton's performances were filmed and will appear in an upcoming NBC special called NBC titled Dolly Parton: 50 Years at the Grand Ole Opry, which will air on Nov. 26.

The legendary singer shows no signs of slowing down either as she is set to co-host the CMA Awards on Nov. 13 at 8PM ET on ABC alongside Carrie Underwood and Reba McEntire.

Grateful Dead New Live Album - Ready or Not

Grateful Dead New Live Album With Unreleased Songs Announced - Ready or Not features songs intended for the band’s final unrecorded studio album. It collects unreleased recordings from the band’s 1992-1995 lineup before Jerry Garcia died. Releasing - November 22

A stirring conclusion to the Grateful Dead's three-decade career, music filled with adventure and possibility, big questions, big punchlines, and cosmic wisdom...

Maybe you were lucky enough and caught a glimpse of what might have been. You swayed to the unfamiliar, floating along with an unknown melody, joining in for a chorus when you felt confident you had it down. Maybe you jotted a fat question mark in your meticulous setlist, certain you'd figure it out before the next show, anticipating a formal introduction in due time.

As if their repertoire wasn't tall enough to reach the endless sky, the band began adding new tunes to their sets in 1992, working them into "quintessential Grateful Dead romps," with the intention of a new studio album. By the mid-90s, they set out recording with the wisdom of Willie Dixon's blues, Neil Young's fuzzed-out guitar, newcomer Vince Welnick's tried-and-true sketches, and Bobby reunited with Robert Hunter on a duo that had quickly become fan-favorites. Alas, it was not meant to be. Until now.

We proudly present READY OR NOT, nine unreleased live versions of late-period Grateful Dead songs that debuted in 1992 and 1993, a reflection of what could have been the band's next official studio album.

Due November 22nd, READY OR NOT will be available on CD, as a 180-gram 2-LP set, limited to 10,000 copies, and of course, digitally as a download and for streaming.

Looking for that Dead.net exclusive? We've got you covered with an exclusive colored vinyl version of the 2-LP set with one red LP and one blue LP, limited to just 2,000 copies. And we'll hit you with that hi-res digital audio too.

CREDITS: dead.net