Sara, Death Valley

Sidewalk

Dead Bird, Manhattan, 2009

Mickey Baker, France, 2007

The voice on the other end of the line repeats my name: “Mr. Herrrrrington… that’s English, isn’t it?” I’m hunched over in a train station phone booth in Barcelona talking to Mickey Baker, guitarist extraordinaire, and I’m plugging Euros into the slot as fast as possible to keep the connection going--a connection that, with three years of effort, has been rather hard to make.

Mickey Baker lives in southern France, in a small village outside of Toulouse, and advance word was that “he doesn’t talk to anybody” and “he won’t talk to you” and “he’ll want money up front if he decides he’ll talk to you, but he won’t talk to you.” I had heard these words in the States, via friends in London, before I left for a month-long trip to Europe, and I’d already been in Spain for two weeks before finally getting the gumption to call the alleged recluse. Initially, I was hesitant to call; I wanted to get the wording just right to sell my idea to photograph and interview him before he slammed the phone down in my ear.

Here I was, amongst the din of thousands of heat-seeking tourists, coinage poised to slot--and having a dandy conversation with the man, right off the bat. “C’mon up,” he says, with nary a reference to any palm greasing.

But perhaps I’m getting ahead of myself. Who, you may ask, is Mickey Baker? You may not know the name, but you’ve undoubtedly been wowed by his guitar skills. In fact, if you play guitar at all, you’ve most likely been greatly influenced by his playing, either directly from his own recordings or from the records of someone else who’d heard him. A look at the short list of his session work--Ray Charles’ “Mess Around” and “It Should Have Been Me,” Big Joe Turner’s “Shake, Rattle and Roll,” Amos Milburn’s “One Scotch, One Bourbon, One Beer” and Ruth Brown’s “Mama, He Treats Your Daughter Mean,” in addition to songs by Ivory Joe Hunter, the Clovers, the Coasters, Louis Jordan, Joe Clay, LaVern Baker, the Drifters, the Moonglows, Champion Jack Dupree, Nappy Brown and Big Maybelle--suggests that his guitar was heard nonstop on the radio from 1949 until the late ‘50s.

And that’s just the tip of the iceberg. The 1957 hit “Love Is Strange,” recorded during his Mickey & Sylvia era, got him closest to becoming a household name. His late-‘50s solo instrumental records are masterpieces of reverb-soaked, double-tracked and occasionally jazzy, mambo-influenced guitar frenzy.

The man behind the sunglasses, standing in the crowded Toulouse train station, bears little resemblance to the gent on those Mickey & Sylvia album covers--he’s 82 now, heavier and walking with a cane--but you’d have to be blind not to pick him out of the crowd as the only American guitar legend present. His beautiful wife, Mary, is with him, and they whisk me out of the station and toward their home, with Mary behind the wheel of their Peugeot.

The Mickey Baker story begins in 1925 in Louisville, Kentucky. His grandmother operated a brothel there and had her 12-year-old daughter working as one of the girls. One day in early 1925, as Baker tells it, a Scots-Irish piano player stopped in, played some piano in the parlor and, taking a fancy to the 12-year-old, took her upstairs. Nine months later, Mickey Baker popped out.

As he grew, he got passed around a lot, changing homes and staying with “uncles.” When Baker was 11, his mother apparently killed someone, and there was always plenty of turmoil for young Mickey. He ran away often--heading east every time--but was always caught and taken back to Louisville. Finally, when he was 16, he made it to his destiny. He had done his homework for this particular runaway scheme; he read the Hobo News frequently and understood the trains. This time, he was going and not coming back.

Hiding in a filthy coal car, he arrived in Union City, New Jersey, across the Hudson River from Manhattan, in late afternoon. Seeing the immense metropolis from his perch of coal, he thought, What am I ever going to do with this? He jumped train in Union City and, after washing the black coal dust off in the river, he got a lift into Manhattan on a truck delivering oranges. He promptly broke into a store that night, stole a carton of cigarettes and sold them for spending money. It was a start.

He spent four years bumming around Harlem, doing a little hustling and a little pimping, and he made a few bucks as a pool shark. None of it fit well. When he was 20, Baker walked into a pawnshop, intent on buying a trumpet. Most of the black guys in New York wanted to be Louis Armstrong, basically, and play jazz. The Southern style of gutbucket blues was too barnyard, too rural. The blues reminded Baker of Louisville, and, what’s more, there didn’t seem to be any money in it in New York. He preferred Armstrong, Benny Goodman and Woody Herman. He pointed to a trumpet on the wall of the pawnshop.

“How much?”

“$30,” came the reply.

“Uh, how much for this other one?”

“$25.”

After Baker looked at all of the trumpets in stock--and wasn’t able to afford any of them--the pawnshop owner said, “I think I have just the instrument for you.” He went down to the basement and came back up with a scrappy, disheveled guitar with a hole in the back and said, “I’ll let you have this for $14.”

Baker took that guitar, and within a few years--without any formal training--he not only began his incredible string of session work, but also wrote the first of his Complete Course for Jazz Guitar books. “I wrote those before I really even knew how to play,” he confesses, even though every major guitar player in the ‘50s and ‘60s (and countless thousands of others) has at least taken a passing glance at them, if not studied them religiously. A man to the instrument born.

Still, there was a time early in his New York days when the band he was with, attempting a Charlie Parker vibe, didn’t make it, and Baker split for California--frustrated whimsy more than anything. One night, a girl took him to see Pee Wee Crayton’s band, and Baker’s predilection for jazz was tested. Seeing the crowd go crazy for Crayton’s brand of R&B-tinged jump blues made Baker, the ex-street hustler, think, I can do this. He got a job at Del Monte packing tomatoes and, as soon as he could buy a bus ticket, headed back to New York--this time with slightly different musical ideas.

After a 20-minute drive, Mary guides the car up the driveway of their modest but comfortable home at the end of a cul-de-sac. If the French did suburban ranch homes, this would be one of them. The small cement statue of Bathsheba, with her legs cut off, buried in the front yard, lets you know that you aren’t in Kentucky anymore.

At this point, Mickey Baker has lived in France longer than he lived in the States. He moved to Paris in the early ‘60s, like many other black jazz and blues players who were soured by the racial situation in their home country. He speaks of the Mickey & Sylvia days more with disdain than anything; he had a top hit on the radio, played sold-out shows all over the country and appeared on TV, yet he would still have to watch what he said and where he went, eat only at certain restaurants and stay only at certain black-friendly hotels. He’d “made it” in the music business, but only as far as a black man was allowed to make it in those days. Bulls***, he thought, I’m out of here…

No doubt, those final years of the ‘50s were the culmination of his American achievements. He’d met a young Sylvia Robinson a few years earlier, in 1954, when he’d backed her up on an early Cat Records release (she was known as Little Sylvia then). She also became his guitar student, and that’s how they performed together onstage--both up front at the mic, with guitars--Mickey playing those devastating licks, Sylvia playing rhythm, and the two of them singing infectious, flirty harmonies. The idea was to try a Les Paul/Mary Ford thing, but Mickey & Sylvia found their own original sound soon enough. Later, they got signed by Rainbow Records and then to an RCA spin-off label called Groove, where they had their biggest success with “Love Is Strange.”

During most of the ‘50s, Baker had also been recording some of the coolest instrumental guitar records of all time. “Guitar Mambo” and “Riverboat” were recorded a mere seven years after he first touched a guitar. Using loads of reverb, echo and double-tracked guitar techniques, these records pushed the boundaries of the studio guitar sound, much like his hero, Les Paul, had been doing. The songs run the gamut from early R&B and jump blues to, as time went on, more jazz-inflected and mambo-flavored tunes, but always with an edge, an incredible tone and his unmistakable style.

Baker takes me into his house, and Mary brings me tea in the living room. I look over to discover his classical guitar and reams of sheet music. He’s been interested in classical music for some time: Bach fugues and, lately, Mickey fugues. Although he’s been writing classical fugues, his playing has recently deteriorated (in his words), so he’s taken in a young player who originally wanted to learn the blues from Baker, but has been realigned into a classical-guitar prodigy who plays and records Baker’s compositions. (“He would’ve never been able to play the blues,” Baker says. “Just didn’t have it.”)

Baker speaks eloquently on just about any subject, and his bookshelves are stacked with volumes about ancient Roman history, psychology, art and architecture. His curiosity is unbounded. More than anything these days, he loves to read, and it shows. He’s a forward-looking man, but I guess he’s always been. He’s happy enough that the music he made has excited people, but he seems more interested in talking about other kinds of history, hanging out with his wife and generally relaxing and enjoying life.

Mickey Baker never asked me to pay him, although, after the pleasure of dinner, tea, beer and the couple’s hospitality, maybe I should have. When I arrived back in Barcelona late at night, I had to punch a gypsy in the face to avoid losing my Leica--the one that still had the Mickey film in it--but that’s another story…

Pool Hall, Sparta, TN, 1997

East Marion, NY, 2008

Hollywood, CA, 1987

Sara, Lake Michigan

Kitten Natividad, Nashville, 1996

Acolytes of Russ Meyer's cinematic, boob-intensive bacchanalias that played on drive-in movie screens across the country during the '60s and '70s may recognize this cantilevered queen of the double-D cup.  Kitten started life in Juarez, Mexico, eventually moving to Los Angeles, and by her senior year in high school was working for movie star/sex kitten Stella Stevens, cooking and cleaning her Hollywood Hills abode.  In 1969, Kitten started stripping and by 1973 she had won the Miss Nude Universe pageant, which in turn led to star billing at the famous Classic Cat strip club on Sunset Blvd.  In due time, who should walk in and see her but that Chieftain of the Teat, Devotee of the Carnal Chassis,  yes I refer to that Arbiter of au naturel, the Baron of Bosom, bon vivant of the bare skinned and bountiful, Lord Bristols himself, Russ Meyer.  Impressed by her titanic credentials, the self-described "tit maniac" went on to cast her in films, most memorably as the Latin nymphomaniac Lola "hotter than a Mexican's lunch" Langusta in "Beneath the Valley of the Ultravixens", co-scripted by Roger Ebert.  It was also the beginning of a 12 year love affair during which Kitten also starred in the auteur's over-the-top swan song, "Up!".  Their relationship gradually came to an end, as did their filmic collaboration, and she went on to star in some unremarkable hardcore films during the '80s.  In 1999 Kitten endured a double mastectomy but has come through cancer free and by all accounts is happier and healthier than ever.  Re-enter Russ Meyer, who completely footed the bill for the surgery.

Benny Goodman, Charlotte, NC, 1976

While my mother dosed me with heaping helpings of soul, R&B and Motown, dad was the jazzer in the family.  My memories of listening to his LP of Benny Goodman's 1938 Carnegie Hall concert go so far back they're practically embryonic.  The song I was particularly taken with was the 12 minute long "Sing, Sing, Sing".  While vinyl spun on needle, many was the night I would lie down on the floor with my eyeball just millimeters from the ruby-red "ON" light on my dad's old Heathkit tube amplifier and let Benny and his gang transport me... such epic visuals that song would conjure up...  Once I saw a massive wave of elephants storming over the horizon during Gene Krupa's drum solo.  In the mid '70s, when I was thirteen, Goodman came to town and it was natural that dad and I would go see him play.  We sat close to the stage and it was informal enough that I got up, walked to the edge of the stage and shot 2 frames with my brand new Pentax K-1000.  The unprocessed film sat in a drawer for a few years until I was in high school and in my photo class I developed the film, my first time doing this.  Impatiently deciding that the prescribed "30 minutes in 68 degree water" wash time was a waste of time, I did some quick math and figured that 10 minutes in 100 degree water would work just fine.  Well, I got it clean alright... I nearly boiled the emulsion off of the film base.  I tried making prints but they looked like hell.  Years went by, and I became curious as to where those negatives were, but they were nowhere to be found.  Finally, in the late '90s, they showed up in the bottom of a box and I went in the darkroom and printed the best frame, and being a much better printer than I was as a teenager, I was pretty satisfied with the results.  Now why the hell didn't I take my camera to the Lionel Hampton concert...?

Tree, Central Park, NYC

In NYC, in the late '80s... a city ripe with photographic possibilities, I nevertheless decided to photograph this lowly pine tree tucked away in a nondescript part of Central Park.  A few years later I was cutting through the park to get somewhere and, "Hey, there's that tree!".  Snap.  Another photo.  A few years later, ditto, repeat.  Last month, once again, "Shit, that tree!"  It's in an odd part of the park, and there's not really a regular path that takes you past it, but I keep finding it somehow, or it finds me.  Photo on left, late 1980s - photo on right, 2008.

Dell Heter

I first met Dell Heter on New Year's Day 2001, at the top of a 12,000 foot pass deep in the Sierra Nevada mountains of California.  Within 30 seconds we were talking about boogie woogie piano players and we've been friends ever since.  Dell lives in a trailer in a ghost town near Death Valley and in that trailer is a baby grand piano on which he himself plays the boogie.  Dell's been climbing in the Sierra and wandering the California deserts for decades and is a walking, talking guidebook to the famous, infamous and most obscure of places in lower CA.  In the 1960's he took the legendary and prolific climber Norman Clyde out of the mountains and into San Francisco to get Clyde's writings published, which, with the gun-toting, stubborn and decidedly un-citified Clyde, was a story in itself.

Cormac McCarthy

Rolling Stone recently sent me to Santa Fe to photograph Cormac McCarthy.

Cheeta

I was floored when I read a while back that Cheeta was having a birthday. That's right, Cheeta, the chimp who co-starred with Johnny Weissmuller in the 1930's Tarzan movies. I wasn't floored so much by the birthday, but that he was alive at all. He's 76 now, which makes him the longest living chimpanzee on record. After talking with his owner on the phone, I was on the next plane to Palm Springs, CA, where Cheeta lives in retirement. Until recently Cheeta had enjoyed a beer and a cigar everyday. For health reasons, he had to ease up on the vices, however he does still work on his paintings.
Cheeta also co-starred with Bela Lugosi in 1952.

Col. Joseph Kittinger

I had known about Col. Joseph Kittinger since I was a kid. In 1960 he jumped out of a weather balloon at 102,800 feet and he almost reached Mach 1, the speed of sound, during his free fall. The skydive was done for high altitude research, but in the process he did nab, and still holds, the records for the highest balloon ascent, highest parachute jump, longest free-fall, and fastest speed by man through the atmosphere.  I also remembered seeing him in National Geographic when he became, in 1984, the first person to fly a balloon solo across the Atlantic. More here. I was reminded of him recently and decided to seek him out. He was game for a visit, so I went to Florida and photographed him and returned home with this photo, as well as a bag of oranges from the tree in his backyard. More here.