Jimmy Baker, a gangly middle-aged man with a spidery mustache, a friendly smile, and no fingers, ambles north on State Street toward the Harold Washington Library. He lives in the New Ritz Hotel, a walk-up SRO about five minutes from the library, and he knows lots of people on State.
Baker was once a blues guitar player. He was born in East Saint Louis in 1942, but grew up in Mississippi and attended high school in South Bend. He dropped out his senior year and went into music. He says that first year he appeared on two tele-vision programs, American Bandstand and a South Bend show run by the local Junior Achievement. When the music wasn’t paying he worked in various automobile factories, including the Studebaker plant in Flint, Michigan. He says he’s played at the Regal Theater, at Kingston Mines, and at lunchtime concerts at the Daley Center, as well as at the Apollo in New York, the Mid-South Coliseum in Memphis, and the Embers Club in Miami. He says he’s appeared on-stage at one time or another with Sunnyland Slim, Eddie Taylor, Willie Dixon, Little Ester Phillips, Freddie King, Jackie Wilson, and Smokey Robinson and the Miracles. And he says he was getting ready to record an album when his manager, Sonny Thompson, died.
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He says that in the winter of 1983 he was carrying his guitar and an amplifier from the Loop to the public-aid office on 21st Street. He wasn’t wearing gloves, and the wind chill was way below zero. When he arrived his fingers were frozen. He couldn’t afford to go to the hospital, so he simply ran his hands under cold water. When he finally went to the emergency room it was too late. A few months later the circulation in his fingers seemed to be gone–he couldn’t feel them–and he broke them off. “For seven or eight years after that happened I’d go outside when it was cold and my hands hurt. Gradually they got to where they don’t hurt no more. You know, like when you got burnt in a fire–you get burnt, then you get close to heat it burns, it hurts. I was like that with cold. I got to where it don’t anymore, ’cause I stayed out there. Go out every year. Always unbearable pain until you get to where it don’t do it anymore. Don’t hurt no more like that. I got past the pain effect about two years ago.”
Baker says he’s preparing an album, which he hopes to record soon. He’s rewritten the lyrics of ten Chuck Berry songs. “I’ve sorta taken the dust off the record. They’re old-fashioned lyrics, and I’ve changed them until they’re more relatable to today. I’m singin’ about ball games and those type of things. The way that people go about doin’ it now, different things–how they enjoy life, you know, and stuff like that. I’m gettin’ it ready. You have to barbecue it first, the music, then you purify it, then you got to rehearse it till the magic gets on it. Once you know how to do it you can do it yourself. If you don’t know how to do it the recording company will waste a lot of time after you get there. You got to be perfect before you hit the radio anyway. It’s got to be. If someone’s gonna put $200,000 behind your music it’s got to be perfect. It’s no joke at all. Just as serious as making a jet to put in the sky.”
“I’m goin’ to show you how I play,” he says. “The rest of them play like Sonny Boy Williamson. Just like a rat gettin’ a new piece of cheese, once somebody’s gettin’ some new type of music, all of them are goin’, tryin’ to do somethin’ new. Wear the idea out. I play the piano too.” He laughs. “Just a little bit. I show you right here.”
He blows into it, moving his stubs across the airholes and tapping out a rhythm with his foot. He breathes heavily. Every note seems like an effort. It sounds like he needs a new harmonica.
You’ve got me peepin’
