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Remembering David Baker
Remembering David Baker By Lauri Shaw Often in business, we know people exclusively by their work, and the music business is of course no different. For an excellent synopsis of David Baker’s work, please click here: http://www.avatarstudios.net/community/baker.html He did indeed create an impressive discography in his lifetime. Beyond his phenomenal work, he was a unique person who likely touched in some way the lives of everyone he came across. David was an acquaintance of mine who behaved like a friend, and his sudden, untimely death came as quite a shock to me. Originally I was going to interview him about his extensive live recordings with jazz giants, and his place in the history of recording. We had a date set for the interview. I was very excited about some of the things he might say, because David was anything but predictable – he was irreverent in places everyone else I knew might tiptoe about. Conversations with him were a lot of fun. It was the day before we were supposed to meet, and I had not heard from David in over a week, which wasn’t like him. Then I got the phone call. A mutual friend informed me that he had passed away five days prior. After I got through crying, I realized that as hard as it was going to be, I still needed to say a few things about him. Perhaps because I saw a side of him rarely seen by a lot of other industry professionals. David was only 58 years old. I know the number because I was with him on what wound up being his last birthday. He spent it at the AES convention, helping run the panel discussions for the AES Historical Committee. David was a very active and devoted member of the audio community, and he often donated his time to organizations that deal with the history of recording. Dan Gaydos, a curator of the Museum of Sound Recording, had this to say: “I outright cried when I learned. He was so beautiful. He really helped with the Museum a lot, in spirit and in action. He contributed many of his prized pieces – some that he used a lot for his own location recordings: portable Nakamichi cassette recorder, the Sony TC-D5 cassette recorder, the first Sony DAT recorder, straight from Japan, the first Norelco Phillips cassette recorder, which was portable. But the most endearing thing I'll always remember about him was his ability to be humored by it all, his elevating honesty and his willingness to be madcap and colorful in a world that sometimes takes itself too seriously. He was a loving person, very other-centered, considering the efforts and the achievements of others before ever mentioning his own stellar dedication and contributions. My words are just a tiny bit of my regard for him.” David Baker was, above all else, a man with class. In one of his last e-mails to me, he responded to one of my articles by saying, “Wow. If I could write like that, I’d have a real job.” Verve Records had just put out his recording of the Scofield Trio (Enroute). Many outstanding audio engineers are preceded by their reputations for being difficult clients. They have high standards and are therefore hard to please. David was not an exception in this case; I’ve heard people swear that he once pegged a mic case at some unfortunate assistant’s head. I’m not sure what to think about that. I never saw him treat anyone badly. Indeed, he was hardly a saint. He loved a challenging debate, and he had a very low tolerance for anyone he thought wasn’t entirely forthcoming with the truth – he would toss out leading comments designed to make people twitch with discomfort if he thought that they might be liars or hypocrites. He seemed to enjoy nailing this type of person, as if it were a form of sport or high art. But I don’t believe he was ever malicious. I watched him go after people that I respected, and it usually looked like it was relatively tongue-in-cheek stuff. The David I knew seemed to have a soft spot for the underdog. He cared more of what he thought of people than what they thought of him. His principles came first. His eyes gleamed when he told me about his work with the Civil Rights movement. “That was Atlanta in the mid-sixties, you know,” he said proudly. “They tried to run us out of town a bunch of times. They chased us with burning crosses.” He also didn’t approve of the way women are sometimes treated in audio, or the industry types who would hold someone back just because she is female. He and I discussed this at length a few times, and it sounded legitimate to me on his part. Some people will say these things to win points with you. Since David didn’t care if he offended anyone, I believed him when he stuck up for people who were marginalized. I saw it for myself once. I will not, now or ever, complain about tough breaks that come from being a woman in a field that is so heavily male-dominated, or about having to play the game in this precarious boys’ club. In audio you have to be good at what you do with no excuses, and that principle holds true whether you are male or female. However, I won’t sugarcoat the reality of the situation either. If you are a woman, then at every turn there is always some low-class individual who will try to use an unequal situation to his advantage when you are new somewhere, young, or otherwise not well established and attempting to climb the ladder next to the boys. At the networking parties that happen after the AES convention, it can get pretty crude. One of the engineers, upon learning that I had just moved to California, asked me whether I minded being groped. “Well, I came to AES…” I quipped. But it wasn’t really a joke. David knew that I was at AES to write up the show, as well as to maximize and solidify some of my contacts. He dutifully told me which parties to attend, and he personally escorted me to the convention’s official cocktail party at the Marriott Marquis Hotel. David was well respected and a lot of people wanted to schmooze him, yet he made sure to include me, making sure that everyone who shook his hand also shook mine. The night before, I had been out with a group of people. One of these prominent engineers (who will go nameless, in tune with my philosophy that poor behavior should never be rewarded by granting someone notoriety) had been disrespectful (and alarmingly strange). When this engineer spotted David on the sidewalk next to the Lakeside Lounge, he crowed like a true fan, “David Baker! I was your assistant twenty years ago! I can’t believe it’s you!” David nodded and asked him whether he had met me. The engineer’s shenanigans from the night prior were absolutely nonexistent after this interlude. For that weekend, David effectively protected me from would-be detractors. He did it with a certain subtlety, which allowed me to maintain my own dignity. Very few people can muster this approach; fewer still will bother to do so for another person. When I think of David Baker, I think of piercing blue eyes that always had a twinkle in them. I think of an acerbic wit that never missed its mark. I think of a man who loved life and laughter – who adored his work as well as many of the people he worked with. I think of a person who was humble when he didn’t have to be. He was never too busy to be friendly, but he wouldn’t give you the time of day if he thought that anything about you was inauthentic. He was a rare individual with quirks that bespeak some of humanity’s most extreme ones. He was very kind to me, and I still can’t believe that I will never get to see him or talk to him again.
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