BAKER Kenny

Bio

British jazz musician Kenny Baker (1921-1999) began playing cornet in a local brass band when he was 12, following several years of piano lessons at home. By 18 he was gigging professionally with Lew Stone, and had headed for the big town of London like many a British jazzer from the hinterlands. From 1946 through the end of the decade, Baker worked as lead trumpeter and arranger for bandleader Ted Heath. He then began getting into soundtrack work, and can be heard on the scores to films such as Genevieve and The Red Shoes. He had his own group during this period entitled Baker's Dozen, but worked mostly in the more lucrative field of film and television scoring. Despite that he still had a high profile on the British jazz scene and won several Melody Maker polls. Obituaries in his native press described him as a "soloist, section man supreme, and leader."