4 / 8
1954, but it’s initial releases, although containing some amazing music, were
commercial disasters and the label tattered alter issuing only thirty-eight discs.
Nothing daunted, they employed veteran ‘Billboard’ journalist Bob Rolontz as
label manager-cum-A&R man in place of Danny Kessler who had supervised
so many of the flops.
Rolontz did much better but carried on the practice of always using a studio
group to back the vocalists. Astride this group was Mickey Baker, the most
prolifically recorded of all guitarists in the Fifties. Born McHouston Baker in
Louisville, Kentucky, he came from a family of petty criminals but some early
scrapes with the law found him spending his adolescence in orphanages. When
he finally left these institutions he moved up to New York, working as a
dishwasher and buying his first guitar for $14.00. His first group was with Jim
Neely and played be-bop, (remember this was the hip city of Charlie Parker and
‘Birdland’) but a visit to Oakland and seeing Pee Wee Crayton making a fortune
out of
Blues After Hours
convinced him to get in the alley! He joined up with-
sax men like Al Sears, Sam ‘The Man’ Taylor and Heywood Henry, bassist
Lloyd Trotman and together they worked the big Rock ‘n’ Roll shows for Alan
Freed, backing people like Lavern Baker and the Penguins. But these shows
were only a sideline to the serious and lucrative studio work which they did.
Indeed, Baker himself has stated that during these years in NewYork, if producers
couldn’t get him and Sam Taylor for a session, then it was inevitably postponed.
He calculated that he was earning $500 a week in 1952!
4