Interview: Kofi Baker continues legacy of his father, drummer Ginger Baker, with Sons of Cream

Maintaining the legacy of the late Cream drummer Ginger Baker remains vitally important for his son, Kofi Baker.

“It’s pretty much everything at the moment for me. I was doing the Cream stuff before my dad died, but just like on the side here and doing other stuff,” Kofi Baker said in a recent phone call. “But when my dad died, it just became to me very important to carry it on because it’s such great music. … I figured I’m the only one that really knows my dad’s playing and his secrets — I play like my dad without even trying — so I figured I might as well do the music.”

Widely considered the first rock supergroup, Cream consisted of guitarist Eric Clapton, bassist Jack Bruce and drummer Ginger Baker, releasing three albums between 1966 and 1968 with classics like “Sunshine of Your Love,” “White Room” and “Strange Brew.”

With Sons of Cream, drummer Kofi Baker is joined by bassist Malcolm Bruce (the son of the late Jack Bruce) and guitarist Rob Johnson, a grandnephew of Ginger Baker, to pay tribute to their family’s heritage. They’re currently touring, with a stop on Feb. 19 at City Winery Pittsburgh in the Strip District.

“I think I was like 14 when I first met Malcolm. We may have hung out as kids, but I don’t remember meeting him as a kid. I just remember like 14, we started playing together and we’ve played on and off for our whole lives,” Baker said. “And Malcolm plays bass just like Jack without even trying, and he sounds like Jack when he sings, so it’s pretty much a no-brainer that me and Malcolm should get together and honor our dads.

“I think it’s great fun because it’s great music to play because I’m a jazzer and I love improvising, and Cream is all about improvising so it’s perfect.”

Baker stressed that it’s not a note-for-note reproduction, with no night ever the same.

“The shows are so different. We don’t even play the songs the same way. We change the tempos, we sometimes pull it and go into something else,” Baker said. “It’s very different every night, and we got Rob Johnson on guitar and he’s a complete jammer. And Rob Johnson wrote “Crossroads” too, like 100 years ago. … He’s like 30 years old, so I think he found a time machine somewhere. It’s kind of wild that we have Rob Johnson in the band who just has the exact same name as the guy who wrote ‘Crossroads.’”

In a call from Chicago before the tour started, Baker discussed his father’s influence on drumming, repairing the strained relationship with his dad, a missing drum kit and more:

What kind of influence do you think your dad had on rock music?

Well, he influenced everybody, Neil Peart, all those rock drummers. He was an influence on people like John Bonham too, even though they were around at the same time. But John Bonham and Keith Moon all looked up to my dad, so he was kind of like the dad of all of that stuff. He influenced so many people.

He had a different swing of things, just like a lot of drummers influenced (others). John Bonham influenced drumming because he put a different thing on it. Stewart Copeland influenced drumming, but my dad was kind of like the beginning of that, I suppose. Back in ‘67, I think he was the best drummer in the world — ‘67, ‘68, ‘69, I think three years or something — so it was kind of like the forefront of that heavy drumming, but not just straight simple stuff, more inventive.

If you had to choose a favorite Cream album, what would it be?

Oh, I don’t know because I like them all. There’s stuff on all of the albums I like. That’s the thing about Cream. I think they did a lot of great songs. I mean, there were a few throwaway songs. My dad was saying “Wrapping Paper,” he hated that one. But I don’t really have a favorite album. I pretty much like all their albums.

Is there stuff that you’ve learned trying to figure this music out or learned about your dad’s playing style while doing these shows?

… Later on, I’d hear songs and I’d be like, ‘Why didn’t you teach me that fill? That’s a different fill you haven’t taught me.’ So there are a few things that I learned later on that he didn’t teach me, but pretty much he gave me the forefront of the whole way of playing that he learned to play, so when I went down that path, it led me to the same places he ended up. So I have learned a few things later on from him.

He’s kind of surprising because he has a lot more technique than people know, because he was a jazzer. He could read and write music, not just drum music, treble clef bass clef, everything. He could write out trumpet parts. He was a lot more musically aware than people realized. People just thought he was out of his head smashing drums, which he was at the end, I suppose. (laughs) He made me learn all the rudiments first before I was allowed to play on a drum kit. I had to learn to read music. I had to do all that stuff when I was like 13, 14 years old. So he taught me all that stuff.

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I guess there was a little bit of a fractured relationship in later years. Now that a few years have passed since your father died (in 2019), do you still have those conflicted feelings about him?

Well, it was kind of weird. It was like the last 10 years, I just said, you know, that’s it, I’m done. I’ve tried. He’s married this Kudzai woman (Ginger Baker’s fourth wife), who’s a really bad person. And she just made it really difficult. So I just gave up. I said, ‘You know what, I’m done. My dad’s dead to me.’ I said to Rolling Stone, it’s like he’s dead to me. And they took that. But then, right before he died, I said, I’ve had enough of this (expletive).

And I called him up said, ‘Look, Dad, you’re gonna be 80. … let’s just bury the hatchet. Let’s figure stuff out.’ And he was like, OK, let’s meet at his sister’s house. We were going to Pat’s house, which is his sister’s. And we were going to meet up and just bury the hatchet and work it all out. And he got sick right before that, because I was flying in from here to do the tour in England, I was touring in England, and I was going to meet up with him right before the tour. And he got sick and went in the hospital. And I tried to get my flight earlier and I couldn’t get it.

But he managed to come back a little bit and I went to see him as soon as I landed in England, went to see him, and it was really good. It was like we really buried the hatchet. Everything was great. He laughed with me. It was like, I’d never had such a great conversation with him, and I was just like, wow, that’s great. And I said I’ll be back in six days or seven. I’ll be back next week. I’m going up to Scotland to tour, and I’ll come back and we can hang out some more. I went to Scotland, and he died the day before I headed back, so I never got to see him again. But apparently the whole time, the six, seven days that he was there, he was calling for me the whole time. So I don’t know what he wanted to talk to me about, but I never got to talk to him.

I’ll never know, but I think it’s got something to do with the Kudzai thing because she rewrote the will right before he died and tried to write us out of the will, pretty much wrote us out of the will. It was pretty much nothing, and I think he realized at the end how bad she was and what she’d done. She got his drum kit. My dad wanted me to have his drum kit. She even said to me in the hospital, ‘Yeah, he wants you to have his kit.’ And I said that’s all he said he’d ever give me. The snare drum, it’s the snare drum I learned to play on. He gave me that drum, and he stopped playing for a while, gave me that drum and then played other drums. That was the snare drum I learned to play on, which was the Leedy snare drum that he played through Cream and Blind Faith. And I thought, at least I’ll get that back and I’ll take it to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, and I’ll put it in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, because that’s where it should be. And she wouldn’t give it to me. She said, ‘You will get nothing!’

Have you ever found out what happened to those drums?

No. None of the family went to his funeral because she (ticked) off everybody so much that no one went. There was not one blood relative that went to his funeral. All of his family wasn’t there. I wasn’t there. My sisters weren’t there. No one was there because she (ticked) off Pat really badly, upset Pat, his sister. She upset all the family and took control of everything and said ‘We will do it this way.’

She called up Eric (Clapton). She got hold of Eric’s number, the agent got hold of Eric’s number, called up Eric, and Eric calls me: ‘What’s going on? Who is this person? I will not be attending any funeral the way this is set.’ And that was it, and then Eric called me a few months later and said let’s do our own tribute to your dad, and that was the gig I did. … She’s not going to be able to sell them because they’re well-known drums, so if she sells them she will go to prison because she’s not allowed to sell them. They were part of the business. They should have been in the assets and should have been in the will, and they should have gone to me. So she’s not really allowed to sell them but God knows she might sell them on the black market or something, so they might go to some private collector.

But it’s such a shame because that drum, that snare drum, should be in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame for everybody to see. So I mean, whoever buys it, if they get it, I hope that they do the right thing and put it in the Rock and Roll Hall or give it back to me so I can put it in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame or something. I mean, she’ll probably sell them really cheap or something.