Drummer known for influence, temper

Brought jazz style to Cream, rock’s first supergroup

Ginger Baker, who has died aged 80, was often credited with being the finest drummer in rock ’n’ roll; it was in keeping with his perverse nature — which embraced tastes as varied as polo, heroin and olive farming — that he should insist he was actually a jazz musician.

He, Eric Clapton and Jack Bruce formed Cream in 1966. With his shaggy red hair and beard, wild-eyed stare and emaciated appearance, Baker, a short-tempered man, seemed the epitome of the crazed rock drummer. His playing was intuitive, complex, polyrhythmical — and usually thunderously loud. His name is synonymous with the 15-minute drum solo. So frenzied were these that he once collapsed during a gig.

The lengthy instrumentals became prime influences, to his regret, on the development of heavy metal and progressive rock.

Cream had hits with I Feel Free, Sunshine of Your Love and White Room, and by 1968 stood with the Beatles, Rolling Stones and Jimi Hendrix as the biggest act in rock music. But it appeared not to satisfy the jazzman in Baker.

The band broke up in 1968, and Baker and Clapton joined Steve Winwood in Blind Faith, which imploded within a year. Baker was not yet 30, but he was to spend the remainder of his career without another hit and would finally renounce rock.

Peter Edward Baker was born Aug. 19, 1939 and raised in south London. He mastered the basics of drumming with a knife, a fork and the school dining table.

After leaving school and strapped for cash, he made do with a drum kit from a toy shop. Later he built one from Plexiglas.

Playing in the early-Sixties jazz scene, Baker was introduced to African rhythms — and to heroin, which would blight his life for 25 years.

He eventually went to Nigeria to explore the roots of drumming.

In 1976, Baker moved to Tuscany, where he became an olive farmer, then later to a ranch in Colorado, where he bred polo ponies.

In 1993, Cream was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. In the years following, Baker recorded a number of jazz albums. In 2016, suffering from heart trouble, he quit touring.

Ginger Baker